


Thesis By a Cruel Angel

by StrangestAeon



Category: The Good Place (TV)
Genre: And breaks some pretty in depth conditioning, Angels vs. Demons, Anxiety, Cannon Typical Memory loss, Cannon Typical torture, Character Study, Conditioning, Dreams and Nightmares, Existential Crisis, Feelings, Fragmented story telling, Friendship, Gen, Implied/Referenced Abuse, Implied/Referenced Brainwashing, Introspection, It's more hopeful then the tags make it sound, Manipulation, Michael basically starts asking a lot of questions, Post-Season/Series 03, Rebellion, Religious Imagery & Symbolism, Season/Series 04 Speculation, Self-Worth Issues, Team as Family, The Good Place: the best horror on TV
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-04
Updated: 2019-05-04
Packaged: 2020-02-21 15:21:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 21,384
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18705007
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/StrangestAeon/pseuds/StrangestAeon
Summary: “Do you want to know my name?”Somehow the thought of that filled him with something acidic.“No, thank you.”But they told him anyway.Like it was special, like it was a secret.





	Thesis By a Cruel Angel

Michael doesn’t remember being born but he does remember being.

Remembers looking out across the nine dimensions into the universe, enraptured with its splendor and glory.

Remembers asking: “Who am I?”

This was his first question.

“Michael,” a voice had said.

That felt right.

“Yes?” Michael answered, head bowed and willing.

“Do you see everything out there?”

A blink, and a near flinch at the sheer beauty of it all. Infinite dimensions of starlight.

“Yes.”

“You must protect it.”

“Yes.” He says because of course he would- those were the rules and it is what he was built for.

Things were so uncomplicated back then.

 

* * *

  
They showed him things, taught him the splendor of the cosmos and his place in it.

They did not teach him about the humans.

So, this was his second question: “I don’t really understand… Are humans like us?”

“No, of course not. They are just dumb Earth animals.” Another voice, the face now gone from his memory piped in.

Michael liked animals. He had Korzoff, after all.

Still, it sounded so horrible to be both sentient and unaware.

“So, they can’t do what we do at all…?” He asked partially in shock and revulsion. How sad for them to be so blind and poor.

“Don’t worry about them. They never do anything interesting.”

“Alright, I won’t.” Michael promised solemnly, intending fully to put them out of his mind.

He was only successful for a short time.

But then again, so was everyone else.

 

* * *

 

There are many words for what happened, but the one that Michael grows most familiar with is ‘ _M_ _istake_ ’

It went like this:

When humans began to stand and use tools they also began to _murder_ each other. That was decisively complicated. Michael hadn’t known anything could _die_.

“Isn’t that against the rules?” He had asked. A third question.

“Yes.”

“I didn’t know humans could break the rules…”

“They can’t.” The response was ground out, suddenly suspicious and embittered.

Sensing a tone change, Michael tilted his head.

“They can’t… but they did?”  A fourth.

“It’s free will.” The words felt foreign to Michael’s ears like they were made up, “Rest assured though, there will be an investigation and punishment.”

The conversation continued, but unthinkingly Michael had tuned out and gazed up at the swirling universe above them and whispered, “Can _we_ break the rules?”

Because that was the implication, wasn’t it? There could only be a punishment if the rules _could_ be broken?  
  
“We _ARE_ the rules.” The other promised with nothing but teeth and darkness.

 

* * *

 

There was a lot of run around, and then construction.

It all happened relatively fast. It was as if Michael blinked one day and anything looked different.

The Good Place and the Bad Place. That is what the new offices were being called under the umbrella of Human Affairs.

Erected in shiny white and black marble to deal with this new problem of free will. Assistants, named Janet’s were made too. A good thing considering the sudden and monumental increase of workload.

Everything had to be bigger, more ordered, and now there simply were not enough Architects to run things.

"Hi, I'm Janet!" They would say with the same voice and face.

-The same unrelenting efficiency. 

Michael hadn’t wanted to admit it, but the assistants unnerved him a little. Though, it was true the mainframes they created certainly made his job easier.

Progress, it was called. That was the main thing he tried to focus on. Yes, yes, this was good. It didn’t matter that they were so like empty shells of Architects, walking around on puppet strings. 

_Is that what they want us to be?_

Michael shook himself.

Yes, it was best not to think of them at all.

Best to only think about his job.

So, he did.

 

* * *

 

In truth, Michael was just trying to be happy with the joy of creating stars by thinking very little of anything he didn’t need to.

On some days he even believed he was an excellent, astute worker who only thought of the mission.

Those days were _lies._

But he _did_ pour himself into his work more on the days his imagination would surge. He worked until the point where it had been ages since he had asked any questions.

 _This is my purpose,_ he told himself, _and I am happy to fulfill it._

Architects, after all, were meant to follow the rules of creation.

_Even if the rules could be broken._

He blinked.

The real truth was he didn’t _try_ to think of anything outside the job, but questions still came bubbling out: A sixth, a seventh, a seventy-seventh. They just slipped through his teeth like star dust.  

“Does the point system apply to us?” 

“No, it only applies to humans.”

 _Because they can break the rules?_ Michael wanted to ask but didn’t because the others were looking at him with both disdain and hunger, “Is it because-“ He thinks he said ‘are eternal’ but later remembers: asking: “We can’t die?”

“Exactly.”

_There. A clear distinction._

 “I see,” Michael said returning to work, momentarily satisfied.

 

* * *

  

Michael told himself he could have continued working happily for entity until the whispers started to float around the office.

“Did you hear?”

“Hear what?

“What happened over in the Life Creation Department?”

“Oh, you didn’t know?”

“They found out who messed up the humans so bad.”

“Really?”

“What did they do to them?”

“ _Retired_ them.”

 “Are there Good and Bad Places for Architects?”

“No, no, don’t be silly! They retired the poor sap.”

“Retired?”

“By ripping apart their atoms and launching them into the suns- Very painful I heard.”

“There were screams.”

“Yes, shrieks.”

“I heard them.”

“Oh, well that makes sense.”

“Yes, of course.”

“Oh, I see.”

“Indeed, wonderful they finally closed the case.”

Michael listened and nodded along with everyone else, because it did make sense in some abstract way, but it also raised a lot more questions in his head.

Sighing, Michael gazed upward into the cosmos but for the first time, looking up at the beauty of creation did not fill him with wonder and excitement. Instead, all he could feel was a phantom, burning sunlight.

He shuddered.

 

* * *

  

Three more Architects would be retired before a judge appeared before Michael.

It had been so unthinkable eons ago that an Architect could break the rules badly enough at all to warrant punishment. Now punishment just seemed right. Something to realign the cosmic scales.

Balance is what the Judges were always on about: Protection, order, and _balance_. The universe was in danger and it was both humanity’s fault and the Architect’s who screwed with the system.

“Michael.” The Judge had said.

“Yes?”

 “It is my duty to inform you we are undergoing a system change. You do not need to worry about this, everything is fine.”

“A change?” That didn’t sound _fine._

“It is planned, but half of the people here will be working elsewhere. In management of human souls.”

“Souls?” Michael parroted again, he had only ever managed starlight.

“Yes, you needn’t worry. You are perfectly suited to the position. Your performance has been noted and commended.”

“Okay!” Michael had beamed. If he was deemed ready for the new responsibility than he was ready. Plus, with all this background commotion around humans, Michael was rather excited to see what all the fuss was about.

Still, even in his happiness, he had opened his mouth and stupidly asked, “What happens if I don’t want to be reassigned?”

_He did, why did he even ask that?_

A blink, “Everyone gets reassigned.”

And with that the conversation ended.

 

* * *

  

Turns out it was not just most of the other department’s resources that had been liquidated and pooled into the Good and Bad Place Departments-  _All_ other departments had.

Consolidation they had said, it was progress.

 _No wonder they retired the Architect who made this problem in the first place!_ It was a MASSIVE undertaking. The whole afterworld had to be remolded and reconfigured.

Time itself had been destroyed and rewritten into a bizarre shape. It felt like they would need thousands of departments to make any sense of it.

 _Don’t worry, we made an accounting office_ they said _, that takes care of the hard part right there. We still have  our numbers._

Michael walked in wearing a brand-new standard issue human suit. It itched and felt awkward, but it was the department’s uniform. It was extremely perplexing, but also delightful because it meant he was part of something.

He had to laugh really, he had an actual physical form with a strange little mouth and strange little appendages. He had so many questions about them!

_What does this piece do?_

_Why was the breathing tube next to an eating tube?_

_How did they not immediately choke and die?_ It was so complex and interesting.

 “Welcome, to the Bad Place.” The receptionist said drawing him back in from his thoughts. His first few breaths catching in his throat.

“The Bad Place?” Michael fretted nervously, first day jitters. This department was so much bigger than he thought it would be.

“Oh, it’s not bad for you.” A sparkling laugh, “It’s bad for humans who don’t follow the rules.”

Ah yes, the rules. Michael could understand that, sunlight and all.

“Have you been briefed about the point system?”

A nod. Everyone had. Ages ago, he guessed there were updates though.

“Have you been briefed about humans?”

Another nod.

“Good, then it should be pretty straight forward. Defend creation. Punish those that act in opposition to it. It’s all there in the numbers.”

“Okay!” Michael laughed nervously trying to cover up his abashed enthusiasm, maybe it was the meat suit? Squishy and scraggily in the weirdest of places, “Well, what do you want me to do?”

“First, let me introduce you to Shawn. He will be your senor mentor and will show you the ropes around here.”

“Sounds great.” Michael said following the assistant down the winding hallway gaining more confidence with each step.

 

* * *

 

How things went together was fascinating.

“This is how you torture.” Shawn had demonstrated, ripping out a human spine in burst of gore.

“Amazing.”

After a second Michael had to ask, “Is that what will happen if I tear my meat suit spine out?”

“Indeed.”

“Ohh! This is so exciting.” Michael smiled because it was just as fascinating to rip things apart as it was to build them.

Each molecule like a star.

 

* * *

  

What started with curiosity and splendor soon turned to monotony.

 _Humans_ , Michael decided over the next few thousand millennia, _are wretched creatures_. They barely did anything! They were the furthest thing from interesting.

He almost asked one once, why is was the way it was, but stopped himself because Shawn was there directing him how to model the networks to construct fire-tornadoes and killer bees.

It was basically automatic. Why he was even a part of the scenario was mind numbing.

Over time, even when Michael was left to his own devices he couldn’t really cajole anything out of the humans besides screams.

On some days, despite knowing they had complex vocabularies and a voice box, he wondered if they even spoke at all.

 

* * *

 

“Hey, anything new today?” Michael had asked one of his co-workers once.

“Nah, you know working hard or hardly working. Same as always. I never understand why you keep asking that.”

Michael just shrugged.

“Maybe some day something new will happen?”

“You mean newer than these carbon bodies? I sure hope not.” The co-worker huffed turning his attention to the cup of antimatter.

Michael noted that one of his compatriot’s hands gripping the cup was scaly and a deep, ice blue.

_Huh._

 

* * *

 

Michael did not actually have to wear his meatsuit to work outside the office. In the office it made sense to deal with a limited budget and size constraints. Out on the torture floor though, anything was fair game.

His meat suit always itched but he lacked the confidence to shed it during break time. He didn’t even need to have his own form, he could choose any number of terrifying visages; all helpfully generated by the Janet and Bad Janet networks.

You want horns? Cool. Sixteen legs? Sure. A flaming sword for a tail? Why not?  
  
In the early days everyone experimented. In retrospect it was probably the most creative time in the Bad Place- a veritable Golden Age. There were even prizes for the more terrifying you could make yourself. 

Still, despite the options, Michael found he preferred his weird, itchy human suit. He couldn’t explain it exactly but decided that it was something about looking like a human while torturing them. It added an extra layer of betrayal to the experience. A familiar face made monstrous.

_That had to be it._

Or maybe he had just gotten used to it, like how the others got used to their flaming eye balls, poison spikes, and wings.

It wasn’t that he _actually_ liked it or anything.

 

* * *

  

“Are you happy here, in your position?” A census taker once asked, little pen scratching against an information pad.

“What do you mean?”  
  
“Are you satisfied in your _purpose_?”

The question felt dangerous somehow, bad tension in the air.

“Sure.” He had said, with only a little hesitation, smiling his human teeth.

Why is his suit sweating? _It wasn’t even a lie._

It felt good in a way, _didn't it?_ bringing order to the chaos that was humanity. They had paradise on Earth. Everything given to them, but instead of treasuring it, they chose to rape, pillage, and murder each other.

_It was beyond frustrating!_

_Who does that?_

So, in a way, the Bad Place's job was good- important even.

Some days the sheer volume of souls would be so overwhelming Michael caught himself wondering if humans would ever murder themselves out of existence.

From what he understood, there were a few close calls. It was never a question before, but now with this whole free will business it was no longer certain.

 _Total logistics nightmare_ , he though as he took some more files into his hands.

He walked down past the lightning rooms and spike pits sighing, _I_ _s that what this was for? To prevent destruction?_ _to make sure humans wouldn’t erase themselves?_ It seemed like as good a reason as any.

He did not ask _: Would the Department ever want to run out of people to torture?  What would it mean for a system and lifestyle that had invariably grown intertwined with the resource it was dependent on? Would it ever let that happen?_

_Could it afford to?_

 

* * *

 

“You know… I was thinking about all this torture.” A flutter of hands.

“Yes...”

“If a human did this it would be against the rules, right?”

“Of course. Torture is a pretty serious sin.”

“I don’t have to follow the rules then, do I?”

He asked this question before. But kept doing so, because he wasn’t sure how to ask the, _why?_ about this.

He was torturing after all, he was sinning.

“Of course not, we are _special_ , Michael. You are outside these petty human things. You only need to follow _our_ rules. No one else’s, especially not these pathetic creatures.”

“Of course.” Michael nodded, “I mean how dumb does a creature have to be not to do the right thing?”

_How dumb would I have to be?_

“Now you are getting it.”

 

* * *

  

Humans were _not_ interesting until out of nowhere a human spoke.

“You know what? I’m done.”

“I’m… I’m sorry, what?” Michael asked. It was so shocking. A human soul had never actually spoken directly to him before.

“I’m done.”

“You can’t be done. This is the Bad Place! You are supposed to sit here and-“

“What? Get my finger’s broken and my spine ripped out? I’ve been doing this for hundreds of years, bro. I’m bored. This is stupid. I am done.”

Michael ripped the human’s spine out several more times but never seemed to erase their dead eyed stare.

He didn't understand but it was mocking him somehow. 

“Bored?” He whispered. The concept seemed staggering. _How could you be bored of existing?_

When Michael brought the problem to Shawn, Shawn just scoffed, “This is a common problem we get with some of the older souls. We have R&D working on different solutions now.”

“But what should I do now? The torture is ineffective.”

He sighed, rubbing where a third eye should be, “Just transfer the human to Glen’s department and make Eliot start a memory wipe.”

_Memory wipe? Like a reset?_

Michael faltered.

_But why would the same kind of torture do anything if it didn’t work in the first place?_

This was a band-aid solution.

“Oh, okay…?” Michael said uncertainly, something in his chest cavity growing cold.

“For now, we can place you with some different souls while we get things figured out. We have a project going on where the clients essentially relive a dying sequence. It’s a lot of suspenseful chasing and intimidation. The theatrics, the drama! You will love it.”

“I can do that.” Michael said, and so he did.

Later, when he was back at his desk and none of this was his problem, he wondered why he still had that human’s file.

 _#1287EX, huh?_ He shrugged chalking it up to a lapse in judgment but did not make any move to throw it out.

 

* * *

 

The next human Michael had to torture, he hesitated.

“What is this that we are doing?” Michael asked, unthinking. _Had he asked this before?_

“Justice,” came Shawn’s decisive answer.

Michael looked down at the client’s rap sheet and felt compelled to agree.

 

* * *

 

Things went well for another millennium. The only difference in the new department was the further contact with the humans.

There was lots of slow-paced chasing and slaughter. At some point it wasn’t really the flash of red that was exciting so much as the details in the scenario. The small Earths the humans would imagine while he hunted for them through various terrain were almost, if not quite, the same in intensity as the swirling night sky- just micro rather than macro.

Sometimes he would stop and point, “What’s this?”

The confused and terrified humans would tell him, sometimes at least, voices shaking.

 _It makes butter? What was butter?_ _It holds paper? But it’s so bendy?_ There were so many delicious questions, he had to reign himself in before he could go on a tirade and ruin the horror of the scenario.

“Huh, neat.” He allowed himself to reply because before he ‘killed’ them with whatever object had caught his fancy. Then it was antimatter time until the soul regenerated, and he could begin again.

Amazing what humans could build. Not that they were anywhere near Architect level. Lost in thought, Michael almost didn’t hear a voice calling to him:

“Michael, what do you have in your hand?”

“Nothing, boss.”

And into the draw with the file his stolen treasure would go.

 

* * *

 

After about fifty or so stolen artifacts Michael asks, “Say, do you think a human would make a good Architect?”

The other, now faceless, department worker he was with laughed through their too big human suit’s teeth, “Oh Mikey, you’re so funny.”

“Hahah, yeah that’s me.”

 

* * *

 

The first time he had heard the word “demon” had been a shock. Almost as big a shock as when he had a human first told him their name.

“You have names?” He had asked dumbly. They had files, there was names on the files. Why did it seem so strange that these small designations existed outside the paper?

“Of course,” File #8753TA said, “Don’t demons have names?” 

When he told them his name they threw back their head, pale with simulated blood loss, but still managing a stilted and wheezing approximation of a laugh.

Michael was starting to feel a little unsure about blood. It was so messy.

“I don’t get the joke…” He murmured.

“No, I doubt your kind really have humour.” The human’s eyes practically sparkled with something unidentifiable, leaving Michael feeling wrong footed.

It was clear there were a lot of things about humans that Michael didn’t get.

He summoned a plague of locus and more spikes, but none of the feeling went away.

He certainly had some studying to do.

 

* * *

 

Turns out humans had a whole _religion_ around the Architect that gave them free will; or at least a coincidentally similar creation story that they toted around and pulled out when they wanted to declare yet another holy war against some adversary or ethnic minority.

They had things in that religion called angels and demons. Demons in particular were horrid creatures that ripped apart the souls of the corrupt-

it wasn’t wholly inapt.

“Why do you think they call us that?” He had asked Shawn.

“Probably because they are simple minded animals that cannot comprehend the unending pain they face in the wake of their poor planning and decision making.”

Another voice, a new guy named Todd spoke up, “Or maybe because their actions cause their very universe to unbalance, so we have to work twice as hard.”

Michael just hummed as Todd and another demon high-fived.

Later that century, when an employee of the Good Place came over to file some paper work and called them ‘demons’ he didn’t flinch.

It was flattering in a way, taking up such a large part of the human psyche about the fate of their souls. Maybe it would scare a few into finally getting the right ideas through their heads.

 _Todd was right, it would certainly be less work!_  
  
He shakes his head only fleetingly questioning  _whose right ideas he wants to put into the human's heads_ , or why they _might not want him and the others to work less_.

"Overtime." He decides and goes back to his project. 

 

* * *

 

 “Have you every considered a transfer to the Good Place? Us _angels_ are always having a good time in paradise.”

“No, thank you. The work is important here and it’s fun.” Michael would reply, always adjusting whatever piece of neck material he had. _Had his meatsuit’s nails always been this jagged? Was there a way to fix that?_

The angel would nod, and shrug as if Michael were a puzzle they couldn’t figure out.

If Shawn, or another higher ranked demon, were in the room when the ‘polite’ offer was made they would always smile and clasp him on the shoulder.

“Good job, rookie. You tell those goody two-shoes how it is. They wouldn’t last a day doing _real_ work.”

Glowing, Michael would say, “No, I suppose not.”

 

* * *

  

Michael tried to imagine the Good Place once and the human souls that might belong there.

_Where they really different from the souls here?_

The humans were difficult to picture. It was hard to think of them as anything other than in agony.

The Good Place itself was easy though.  

It was probably like the swirling cosmos above him.

Michael blinked.

It had been eons since he last looked up.

 

* * *

 

“How do you go to the Good Place?” He asked once, wondering where the so-called angels came from when they visited.

“Why do you need to know?”

“I guess I don’t, really.” He admits.

 

* * *

 

“There has been a planned outbreak of plague in Europe that worked too well.” A senior agent had told him, directing him to a different section of the department,

“Our current staff cannot accommodate. You will have to fill in for Greg and Glenn, as they have their hands full at the moment.”

“Oh, of course.” Michael shuffled his feet as he followed behind into the new area of the Bad Place. He hadn’t been here before, it looked new.

“It’s pretty routine. Create a bunch of multi-headed lions to eat these humans and then you can call it a day.

“Sure thing, Boss.” When he entered the scenario room he hesitated.

“Hey, Bossman, is there a reason these humans are so tiny?”

“They are just young, but age and size does not excuse the badness they bring into the universe.”

“Sure.”

No one answered his question about what being young meant. 

 

* * *

 

“Augh, don’t you just hate humans?” Susie, from the Crushing Department, sighed dramatically.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean they are so much work! We could be doing so many more fun things! But no, we have to be here in these dumb costumes.”

There was a chorus of ‘here heres!’ from the nearby desks.

“Humans are so dumb and stinky… It’s like why bother, right?”

Another agreeing chorus.

Nobody asked why, if that were true, they _were working at all_ , and Michael, for the first time since his creation, wasn’t about to.

Unfortunately, keeping his mouth shut didn’t actually make any of his curiosity go away.

 

* * *

 

"Why did you laugh at me?” Michael asked File #8753TA one day after a round of torture. 

 _Why was he here?_ This human wasn’t his client anymore. 

He worked in the plague department now, pushing people into lava. Or at least having the simulation push them into lava for him. 

He really _shouldn't_ be here- but this was already his eighth visit.

“I don’t remember doing that.” The human replied only lazily swiping the burning ants from their skin, "Lots I don't remember."

They were showing the distinct features of ‘being board,’ meaning they would have to be moved soon, or wiped.

Michael would have to find them again, and _ughh._

None of this was working. Whoever had been assigned to them was doing a terrible job.

It was probably Glenn.

“You wouldn’t.” Michael conceded.

“Do you remember what we were talking about?” There was impatience there, but also a reluctant amusement. 

“Names.”

“Okay, well…What’s your name?”

“Michael.”

“Ah. It’s the irony.” The human’s face was already lit up, with that something Michel couldn’t identify, “Michael is an angel’s name. A demon with an angel name, it’s funny.”

 _I’m not **not** an angel._ Michael wanted to protest but found himself unable.

Biting his meat-tongue he managed, “I hate to tell you this, but your sense of humour is pretty twisted.”

The human grinned at him, too much blood on their white teeth. The wrong-footed feeling was back, and Michael wanted nothing more than to leave.

 _What did the human’s file say? Fraud? Tax fraud?_ They were some kind of liar, so Michael didn’t _have_ to listen to them.

“You know,” the human continued, like Michael was a particularly interesting bug that had just done a trick, “There was one angel we talked about in church… he became a demon too.”

But Michael was never an angel so what did it matter? He was fundamentally different from them. _Wasn’t he?_

“Do you want to know my name?”

Somehow the thought of that filled him with something acidic.

“No, thank you.”

But they told him anyway.

Like it was special, like it was a secret.

“Why-why did you tell me?”

“Because names are important.” Came the easy reply.

When Glenn came in later to snap all the client’s memories back to zero, Michael stayed, letting the whiteness wash over everything.

There were two files now in his desk now.

 

* * *

  
  
“Why do you do this job?” Michael asked.

Shawn, in the process of being considered for a promotion, just shrugged in his condescending way, “Because I am a demon and it is fun.”

“Oh.”

“Why do you do it?”

“Totally the same.”

 

* * *

 

_Names are important, huh?_

“Say, did you ever catch the name of the person who set this whole free will ball rolling?”

“What are you even talking about, Mike?”

“The humans, y’know,” He gestured vaguely, “What was the name of the person they retired for messing up the humans?”

“You are so crazy, Mikey. No one has ever heard of that!”

“Well it happened, back before they even had Good and Bad Place Departments so maybe you never heard about it, but it definitely happened!”

“Ha, you are so funny. How could there be anything before? Pfft, was it like the Amoeba and Dirt Departments? That sounds pffffft lame.”

Michael blinked trying to convey his seething contempt for this conversation. In an instant he suddenly understood the concept of young.

And knew immediately that he wasn’t.

 

* * *

 

The plague ended up being such a slog and caused such a back up, that a new R&D department was created.

“More lava,” someone suggested. They got a promotion along with Shawn.

To Michael’s eye though, skeletons and angry alligators don’t really do anything after a while, even after extensive wiping. The souls were just kind of _tired_ , and he was _tired_ too.

“This isn’t really all that different from living.” That human, #1287EX, still covered in shark bites and boils confessed to Michael, “Are you sure we are even dead?”

“Are you…calling me and the methods of my department boring?”  

“Um… Yes?”

It was a conversation that caused Michael to sit and contemplate for a long time.

_There must be a better way to process all these souls._

 

* * *

 

“You know this nightmare-monster-running-around bit seems kind of played out,”

“Oh, what do you mean?”

“I mean like, it’s a young person’s kind of gig. Is there anything offered at a slower pace?”

A blank stare, “Well, R&D is looking for more people; it seems the human disease of boredom is spreading. It is making our jobs more complicated, and making the automatic simulations ineffective- Would you be interested in research work?”

“I can do that!”

Another blank look.

Michael tried again, reigning in his enthusiasm, “I mean, I’ve been enjoying the new prototype torture scenarios they have been advertising. I thought I would best serve by trying my hands on those teams.”

A thoughtful hum and some chin stroking, “Perhaps if you complete the prototype trials they can start you on designs, and then after that who knows? Maybe you could be an Architect.”

“Oh!” There was excitement creeping in again, “I used to be a Star Architect. I think I can do well there.”

Much to Michael’s chagrin, the upper demon just laughed, “Oh Michael, that’s not being a _real_ Architect. That department went defunct ages ago, being a Human Torture Architect is much more high skill, you would have to apprentice for a very long time before you could ever even conceptualize the grand design we have growing here.”

“I can do it.” Michael assured, “I can do it.”

 

* * *

  

It wasn’t _exactly_ new methodology, like they said it was.

Which grated on Michael.

They made it seem high skill and _it wasn’t it just wasn’t!_

The prototype scenarios ended up being _psychological_ torture.

“I can handle the prototype scenarios.” Michael had promised, which is how he found himself in a lightly blazing library reeking of sulfur and eternal humiliation.

 _Was this a replica of Alexandria?_ _Of some university?_ _How was physical fire still psychological?_ None of this seemed very scientific.

Still, Michael put those questions out of his mind because this was still an improvement, however marginally. He was good at this kind of torture in ways he wasn’t back in his old departments. Shawn had said so, so that had to count for something.

His meat-suit itched less, everything fit him better.

A maintenance worker once said, ‘good job,’ while he was in the room.

Things were _fine._  

It was a relief that the whole psychological torture thing had felt _good_. So good that it almost became second nature after a while. He forgot all about his questions, and his feelings, and his annoyance that they could make it work better because his purpose was here!

He grew confident.

In fact, it was going so ridiculously, impossibly well that it almost wasn’t a shock when human Case #9901SE made him start to question himself again.

  

* * *

  

It happened like this:

The task was to flaunt his superior knowledge over the universe in front of this scholar so that he would cry, or whatever, over the fact that their puny human brain couldn’t handle the raw tonnage of wisdom in the afterlife- thus, condemning them to eternal ignorance.

“Well, what do you _think_ about that, huh?”

The human tilted their head up at him. That still unidentifiable thing flashing in its eyes.

Michael had just burned those eyes from the inside out, but here they were, regrown with that _emotion_.

A red and raw blink. “Could you repeat that? I’m afraid my ears are still ringing.”

“You are stupid.”

A small smile, “I know, after that?”

Michael had told them that he possessed all knowledge and that it was impossible for them to try without going mad, or exploding, or possibly a combination of the two.

“Wait, you possess every piece of knowledge out there in the cosmos?”

“I uh…?” Michael paused, “Correct. Doesn’t that just throw a rock at your precious glass ego?” Michael lips twitched in satisfaction.

But the human wasn’t upset, quite the opposite actually- They looked thrilled.

“Wow, really? Can you answer any question I ask?”

“I-uhh can. But you may not like what I have to say.” His voice warbled. His spooky tone probably coming off as choked.

The human grinned.

Something was _wrong_. All the other humans had asked petty things about people they knew back on Earth or stupid things about their damnation. Where they were, what they did to deserve this, etc.

They weren’t polite like this… they didn’t look like this. Look at  _him_ like this.

This one just stared, looking for all the cosmos, that they were the one that knew the all the answers.

It was maddening. 

“Well alright, my question is: What is something you _don’_ t know?”

A strange feeling pulsed through Michael.

 _The last time he looked up, the reason he couldn’t stay in one department, The name!_ Michael wanted to say all of them but didn’t because that would ruin something. The experiment, maybe?

 Instead he whispered with all the contempt he could find, “How to feel sorry for you.”

“I think I feel sorry enough for the both of us.” The human said in awful sincerity. Leaning back in disappoint, like Michael had failed some test.

Michael was not human despite his meat suit, he didn’t understand the emotions being displayed, but he didn’t like the idea of wet, leaky eyes.

Didn’t like the idea of not understanding something.

 _What did the dosser say? What did this thing do wrong? Was this manipulation?_ It felt like what was happening here might have been manipulation.

“I suppose that is the problem with forever.” The human mused continuing past Michael’s stricken pause, “Forever can’t understand fleeting things. It is all meaning, but functionally meaningless.”

“You died in the dumbest way possible, don’t act high and mighty!” Michael frowned, how dare this cockroach tell him anything? Look at him like _he_ was the stupid one?

  _There isn’t a problem with forever!_ Michael wanted to lash out. Yell- maybe, drop a thousand end tables on them.

 Forever let you experience the grandeur of all the realities folding in on themselves, a billion possibilities, and all known knowledge swirling together at once. It was splendor, it was everything!  There weren’t any problems with it; it was the very definition of perfect.

 _Then what was the name?_ a small part of Michael seethed as he left the room to file his report back at headquarters.

_Is it just forgetting? Is this what forgetting is?_

Turns out psychological torture was a success. Michael just wasn’t sure who it worked better against: humans or demons?

Three files sat hidden in his desk. 

 

* * *

  

 _Should I ask about the name?_  Michael contemplated. _What had that human said? Names are important?_

While he was lost in thought, another demon walked in.

“So, the psychological torture is a success then?”

“Unequivocally.” Michael said because there was no other right answer.

“Good. Papers will be sent requesting a permanent transfer. You have time to reconsider if you wish.”

“Thank you.” Michael said, but he had already made up his mind. There was something sparking in him that had been missing for a while, if this new job worked then soon he would be able to build again.

It was a comforting thought.

“Are you sure you wanna transfer, Mike? A co-worker asked, “You’ll have to start from the bottom up, be an apprentice again. It will take you ages to get any kind of promotion.”

 _When was the last time he was looked at for promotion_? Probably not since his initial transfer to Human Affairs.

That both did and did not feel that long ago.

An image entered his head of Shawn squeezing his human-meat shoulder a little too tightly.

“All I have is time,” Michael shrugged.

The transfer went through with no problem.

 

* * *

 

Later, driven by an unidentifiable frenzy, Michael put in a ‘Request of Information’ form to head office to find out the name of that first Architect who was retired.

The Bad Janet at the office chewed her gum loudly and flips him off as he walks away. He doesn’t like to pay attention to Janet’s and so does not notice her paying attention to him.

Years later, after he has almost forgotten about his query at all, he gets a reply.

**File. Not. Found.**

The eternal afterlife was supposed to be the ultimate paradise- a bastion of order.

_So, how in perfect order, could anything be lost?_

It had to be a mistake.

Michael does not ask: _What else was a mistake?_ But he is close.

 

* * *

 

It was a bit of an off day, he was filling in for Chad in the lightning room, back in the physical torture section.

The dark skies and harsh crack of thunder wasn’t exactly the most fun place to be.

“Oh, you’re new.” The human, #2022JJ, said after their flesh had reformed. They seemed disproportionally happy about that simple fact.

He opened his mouth to say something scathing but the human just continued, unbothered.

“You know when I was alive, I had this problem where I couldn’t actually feel anything. Apathy, I guess- a common problem for ladies of my social strata… But here, I can feel everything.”

_Ladies?_

Michael was, to say the least, bewildered.

“I just think it is kind of funny, that you can be in agony and interested at the same time.”

“I–“

They-She- continued, “So, what I mean is, I think this agony is really interesting, and I think it is interesting you can be interested while in agony. Don’t you agree?”

“Yeah,” He says softly to a sparkling smile, “I agree.”

_Curious and in agony._

_Hm?_

Later, back at his desk, which now had four files carefully hidden, he decided to follow up on his previous question and requested a ‘Find Lost File’ form and then re-requested the lost file after his first attempt failed.

On the third attempt the Bad Janet who took his forms threw them in the trashcan in front of his face. And then popped the trashcan out of existence.

“Hey!” Michael exclaimed, angry.

The Janet grabbed him by the tie around his meat suit neck and shoved him against the wall.

“Listen here, Dingdong.” She said with surprising vitriol, “If you know what is good for you- then stop requesting that file.”

“Why?” Michael blinked but was unsure if he was asking about the file or why there was a suspiciously strong hand crushing his breathing-and-also-eating tube.

“Because I was ordered to burn _everyone_ who asked after it.”

“I-“ Panic faded to a forced calm.

_Burn?_

The phantom sunlight.

“Oh, I see.” Michael said but didn’t really. Janet’s weren’t supposed to be able to hurt demons.

The Bad Janet let him go and pinged away. Her eyes, in the split second before she vanished, looked just like the humans.

Numbly, Michael returned to his desk.

_Did a Janet just break the rules?_

_Is this a mistake too?_

There were protocols for this, incident reports to fill out. Michael made no move to retrieve a pen.

 

* * *

 

Later that year, more gossip was going around in the office.

“Did you hear?”

“No, I can’t believe it! It’s so cray!”

“I know, I’ve been telling everyone!”

“Telling everyone, what?” Michael asked walking in. Had they all been in here talking without him?

“About the new plungers! Didn’t you hear?”

“No…” Michael straightened his still ruffled bow-tie only a little bit put out.

“They had to install these kill switches in all the simulation zones.”

“Kill switches for what?”

“The Janet’s!”

“Why?” He asked as someone else said “How?”

There was something he couldn’t identify again, and it was maddening, it made Michael’s head spin and his meat-suit’s middle cavity hurt.

“Apparently she just went berserk and attacked a demon.”

“Isn’t that against the rules?”

_Janet’s can’t break the rules._

_Like how humans can’t._

_-and demons can’t_.

Michael resolutely did not say.

“Yeah, probably a bunch!” The other demon just laughed, “They fixed it though. System patch. Good as new.”

_System patch. Good as new._

In another retelling of the story it was the human residents. In another, an angel. The only thing that Michael knew for certain was that there were now plungers in both the Good and Bad neighbourhoods, so someone wasn’t taking any chances with malfunctions.

“Janet?” He called, having found an empty board room.

“Sup, Dongface.” She didn’t look up from her phone. Programmed insolence looking at programmed obsolescence.

“Do you… know me?” he asked awkwardly.

“I know everything important in all of space and time. So, of course I don’t know you.”

She pinged away. Eyes dull.

He decided not to request any more files after that.

Something deep within him told him to survive, which was ridiculous as he wasn’t alive at all.

 

* * *

 

He kept his head down. Worked hard. Was friendly. People liked him, or at least tolerated him enough where they would sometimes come talk to him when he sat alone at the anti-matter maker. 

When David came up to him in the office he was overjoyed.

“My design will be perfect! I’ll work so hard!” Michael promises after David’s promotion proposal.

“This is your shot, good luck.” The smaller demon smiled. It was part pride and part warning.

Anticipation settled low into Michel’s chest, but joy too.

He could finally create again, maybe finally get some recognition.

For a moment starlight danced in his vision before it faded, revealing the reality of office life.

However, when he sat down to finally design…

_Nothing._

_Came._

“It has to be different and special.” He said to no one, “It has to be better.” _He had to be better._

“Don’t rock the boat,” he was told, “Just do a good job.”

But he WAS good! He has been doing everything right, and still he is left alone. Still treated like an outsider, still wrapped in fear and doubt that made his fake human parts churn.

And _that_ was it.

Oh, he couldn’t contain himself. It was perfect.

He gave the pitch- four people designed to make each other miserable.

“What makes you think you can do this?”

“They won’t know,” he says, “I’ve already stolen a Good Place Janet.”

They seem angry, but Shawn is still listening. He knew Michael, so maybe that was it, or maybe he was just sharper than the others.

It was a revolutionary idea after all.

“Why these four?”

The four files that had sat in Michael’s desk and mind were now pinned up on the board.

#1287EX, #8753TA, #9901SE, #2022JJ. Jason Mendoza, Eleanor Shellstrop, Chidi Anagonye, and Tahani Al-Jamil.

_Why indeed…_

They drove him crazy with confusion and anger, they made him _vulnerable_ to the point where he couldn’t stand it anymore. _They’re were always there in the back of his head! They made him learn superfluous things like names and genders- AND they made him feel stupid enough to ask questions._

_So many questions..._

He gulped. 

 The real answer to Shawn was _ridiculous_ so Michael waved his hand, “Mathematics.”

Everyone knew math had absolutely nothing to do with feelings, and questions, and that strange look that made him feel so insignificant.

 “Its just… mathematics.” He repeats more firmly.

“Walk me through it one more time.” Shawn smiles.

“I’ve already stolen a Good Place Janet!” He brags again. It’s such a relief that he is being listened too that Michael does not stop to analyze the Déjà vu of the situation.

An unlikely plan, the drive to succeed no matter what, the creation of a new system.

A new way of doing things.

 

* * *

 

The experiment went well.

Then Eleanor had to ruin everything.

“Call the train.” She had said, grinning without any fear or humour.

The others shuffled around, confused and burdensome. They looked to Eleanor like a light at sea. Somehow still not convinced she was walking trash only in the shape of a person.

In the other room he paces.

“You’ll be in hot water with your boss,” Shawn sneered, “This is your fault.”

Michael tried to brush it off.

“You might be looking at _retirement_.”

“Retirement?” An old word. _Has he heard it used for this kind of thing before?_

“You can’t be serious.” He gulps, but Shawn’s delight is unmistakable.

Before he was a judge and a demon, he was an Architect too- and pulling things apart is just as interesting as putting them together.

“It won’t be a failure.” _I won’t be a failure!_   He mutters, but then it is.

 “They can’t call a train,” Eleanor pointed at him accusingly, “ _This_ is the bad place.”

_What went wrong? Had she always suspected?_

_She is just a dumb human so how had she broken the rules?_

A hysterical laughter wormed its way up through Michael’s chest, “I can’t believe you figured it out.”

He leaned something in this instant: _The rules can always be broken,_ even if they were _his._

Retirement Shawn had said.

Everything was ruined.

_Ruined._

And it was all Eleanor’s fault.

“This is a disaster,” he had huffed out after a slew of theatrics.

“No, this is wonderful.” Eleanor says, he teeth bared like a promise. Her speech reminds him of the very first time they met. The laughter and the blanketing whiteness.

_Well, he needed a band-aid._

“I’ll erase your memory.”

He leaves, returns, and then does so. He couldn’t have known about the note.

Or how truly and exhaustively _trying_ this group of humans would be.

 

* * *

 

That _forking_ note.

Names were important Eleanor had said. She had written down Chidi’s name, like it was scripture to be saved from the flames.

That was it, that was the problem.

It was a name that she used to help guide her back to the others. To figure everything else out again.

“You can’t do it without the name!” Michael had cried, hysterical because this couldn’t be right. It couldn’t- _it couldn’t._

He took away the name.

He took away everything with a snap, but it didn’t _change_ anything.

_Had it ever changed anything for him?_

As if a watching a broken record skip and repeat, Eleanor would turn to him, that _thing_ in her eyes sparkling as she said, “Oh. This is the Bad Place.”

She never said, ‘ _and you a bad thing,’_  though Michael felt the accusation anyway. Doubly so when at the mercy of the other demon’s who howled their fury at him.

_Why did he take away the name?_

They would be ripping into him, nine dimensions of claws, teeth, and industrial weapons if they were back in the real Bad Place.

They weren’t, so Michael was safe for now, but the threat of retirement loomed every time he hit reset.

After the fifth he swapped snapping for a fancy remote, after the eighth the remote began to feel like a timer.

Eleanor, when she discovered his true nature, never called him a mistake or a failure.

Michael did that all on his own.

 

* * *

 

It had gone like this:

Michael had planned for days. The first thing he makes is a ladybug, and the last thing he makes is the sign saying everything is fine.

“Humans like knowing they are fine.” He had told one of the coordinators to which they just shrugged.

The first human was Eleanor.

He told her his name for the second time. It had felt strange, but then again, everyone has a name (except sometimes) so, it was part of the plan. Part of making him seem _good._

He pushed along.

“Right, so, you- Eleanor Shellstrop, are dead.”

She looks at him. Michael can see the realization washing through her. It’s not jarring or abrupt, but rather a reluctant and curious acceptance. 

“Cool.”

He feels it, the understanding that his design will beat all the others. That this human will never make him question the splendor of order again.

“Every detail is calibrated for everyone here.” He tells her on the tour.

He smiles and laughs at all the right moments. He introduces her to Chidi and the machine to view the fake memories.

Then Tahani and ‘Jianyu.’

And then comes the chaos! The glorious _chaos_ -

Only it wouldn’t last.

There would always be the inevitable realization and the snap. 

The problem, he would realize later, is that his 15 million point planned chaos was not really _chaos_ at all. 

 

* * *

 

“They don’t want Architects to have human objects.” He says on attempt one-hundred, and this is true, it’s always true every time he says it, “But I still like them. I think they are fascinating.”

“Huh.” Eleanor wanders over to his bowl of paperclips, “I used to always do this with them.” And then with a few quick motions of her hands, she made a bracelet.

“Here.” She says handing it to him.

He almost cries out in shock.

“How did you do that?” He asks because he doesn’t want to admit this is the first present he ever received.

“It’s easy, man.” And it really is, but it’s still baffling how Eleanor could just _do that_. Use things for a purpose they were not built for.

It’s like the paperclip’s reason for being created didn’t matter at all.

And that was _okay_ somehow?

When he resets the world and loses his bracelet he cries. Real water comes out of his squishy white-seeing balls.

It’s horrible and embarrassing. 

He has to reset the next world too, because Eleanor sees him.

 

* * *

 

Another time, they are laughing, and it’s a nice moment.

The witch-hunt for what’s causing the so-called ‘glitches’ are always his favourite part.

Then, abruptly, Eleanor tries to devour him.

_No-_

_wait._

That’s _not_ what happens.

She breaths out, pupils blown big and then Eleanor kisses him, just leans in and pushes her face-hole against his face-hole. There is a smooshing sound and saliva.

AND it’s just _**terrible.**_

This isn’t even what the face-holes and teeth are _for!_

 Michael yelps and jumps back. Wishing that she had tried to eat him, it would be better than this if not equally unexpected

“What?” He barely chokes out, and then helplessly: “Why?”

“That’s what this is about isn’t it?”

“W-what?” _She knows, she knows…. How does she know?_ _How long?_

“That’s what this whole place is about? It’s a power fantasy so you can get your rocks off.”

“No-no…It’s a job?”

Eleanor ignore his protest, he can’t back up any more as he is literally against a wall.

“A job? Really? Well, in that case then this is just _you doing your job._ I mean, you aren’t the first guy I met to want to control me. So, here I am freely offering.”

“Offering what?” Michael says stupidly, panic escalating.

“Me.” Eleanor breaths into his ear, it’s supposed to be seduction. Michael had researched it- had researched everything, but he still squirmed. It wasn’t right.

“I don’t- I don’t understand.”

She is undoing her shirt now, and Michael has to shield his eyes, “This is wrong!” He yelps, but apparently that is the wrong this to say.

“HOW!” Eleanor practically is vibrating with indignation, “How is this torture different?”

“You don’t want it?” Michael tries.

“I don’t want any of it! None of us do, so how is a no in this situation any different?”

“I- Don’t…. I- I just-”

It’s not working none of this is working, finally Michael manages to choke out: “Please. I don’t want you to touch _me_.” 

“Fine.” Eleanor finally moves away, and it’s a relief that Michael can breathe again.

Eleanor just crosses her arms, “At least _I_ know when to stop.”

“Please, let’s not do this again,” he says voice crackling as he clicked his remote to reset; except, in theory, seducing your demon jailor is an objectively good idea- So, of course they try again.

When it was Tahani he begged her, “Please don’t send anyone else.” But they send Eleanor again, ‘who totally had it this time,’ as well as Chidi and Jason.

Chidi’s attempts were nothing but an awkward mess.

Jason though, bless his heart, had tried to bro-mace him. That timeline had ended when the two of them were sitting under a tree eating frozen yogurt after a Janet generated monster truck derby.

“This is nice.”

“Sure is, bud.” He had said, delighting in the numerous ways he could figuratively turn this around and stab Jason in the back.

But then Jason’s shoulder bumped his shoulder and he took Michael’s hand.

“We could do this all the time you know. You don’t have to keep hurting us.”

_Ah, oh._

He reached for the remote with his free hand not liking where this was going.

“We would be your friends.”

“I don’t have friends.” Michael snapped.

“Dude,” Jason blinked eyes tearing up, “Everyone needs friends.”

“Not me.”

It was stupid and primitive, but if even dumb baby otters could do it, _why couldn’t he?_

The look that Jason gave him was- _something._ Maybe sadness, there was certainly some level of crying involved.

Michael didn’t have the word, but he knew it made him uncomfortable, so he hit reset.

By this time, he had seen many humans cry, but no one had ever cried for _him_ before. Was he _worth_ crying over?

He blinked, _why did his eyes feel so hot?_

When the blinding whiteness faded, and he welcomed all the humans again he found that the knife was in his own chest somehow.

Eleanor’s voice hissed at him from within his mind: _At least I know when to stop._

 

* * *

 

It ends like this:

Michael wondering how many times he must prove he’s an angel while banging his head against the wall.

At this point, he doesn't know what he is anymore.

Doesn’t know _anything_.

“Eleanor, you are dead, and this is the Good Place.” He tells her his name for the 803rd time, bowtie undone, and suit jacket folded over his chair.

_Is this fatigue? Is this what fatigue feels like?_

“Cool.” Eleanor says.

Michael can tell now that she doesn’t believe him. She never did. Not truly.

He can’t believe he was ever proud of any of this.

 

* * *

 

The figurative noose around his neck is tightening.

When the humans come to him and say “Work with us”, he breaths out a sigh of relief and says, “Good, we are all on the same page.” They don’t like the situation but neither does he. 

“We’ll do it if you take ethics lessons with us.” They say, teaching their demon prison guard and torture-master ethics seems ridiculous, but the noose it still their around all their collective throats and the sunlight is getting bright, so Michael agrees.

The humans were like cockroaches, but in a way so was he.

 

* * *

 

This. Was. Stupid.

He ripped out a page and threw it into the trash.

The whole situation was garbage.

Human’s trying to teach him ethics? Didn’t they know how _ancient_ he was, how _devoted_ he was, how much _starlight_ he was?

Chidi stood across from him, seemingly headless of all the torn pages at his feet.

Think about death he said.

That was stupid too, death is for humans.

“Is there any way you can die?” Chidi had asked. He did not ask, _can you be killed?_ The inadvertent gentleness rips at him, catching him off guard.

“Yeah, the suns, the flaming ladle.” Michael tried to explain with a wave of his hand, “Burning suns.”

“That might happen.” Chidi punctuates the sentence with his hands.

“Yeah.”

“Like actually happen.”

“Yeah.”

“Can you think about what that would be like? What it would feel like?”

_Feel like?_

Michael did not know how to explain that so much of his life was spent not feeling, it seemed so ridiculous to indulge.

But he needed time to fix his mess, so he supposed he would try.

“Okay.”

His mind filled with--- white flashes.

\--Horrible, horrible pain.

\--His atoms being ripped asunder.

\--Screaming. Screaming, they were pouring fire down his throat.

\--He tried to call out, but he had no voice and no one who would answer.

\--They were happy to see him go; no one was mourning him.

\--Were they touching him? It hurt.

\--Laughing. They were laughing.

\--And then they shattered him.

\--And then there was… Nothing.

_‘What’s your name?’_

_‘Do you know your name?”_

_‘It’s-‘_

“No… me?” Michael gripped his human face, glad for a second that he had no claws. He hated this. Hated this so much. He felt like screaming.

He heard screaming.

_Was that him? His voice?_

Chidi was there, then Eleanor, concern rippling through them both.

“How can you do this?” He whispered, still reeling in a confused kind of anguish.

Eleanor was talking now, trying to comfort him.

Touching him. She lets go, can you feel an absence of touch? It was a question to ask later. None of anything makes sense. The only things that are certain are: the weight of eternity, taxes, the crushing certainty of nothingness, and death.

Michael guessed Shawn was wrong and that last one applied to him after all.

_What else was a lie?_

The party goes by in a flash.

The piercing, Janet, the stupid tattoo. He is only dimly aware.

_Dubai! Dubai! Let’s make a Dubai!_

“Catatonic blob,” is what Eleanor calls him.

She isn’t wrong.

“It’s human.” She finally explains after everything, “This is just what humans feel.”

When she leaves Michael looks up. _The sadness is always there huh? If you are a human._ He pokes a finger into his human chest, trying to see if the lump of dread was something more tangible. It occurs to him, that Eleanor might be wrong, about the human part at last, because maybe…

_Just maybe…_

He always had this feeling.

That can’t be right. He _wasn’t_ human. Demon’s couldn’t feel this way.

_And yet…_

Sighing he gets up to prepare another fake report for Shawn. That will distract him. But for the first time in his life he isn’t supposed to distract himself, and there is a ringing in his head and he can’t _he can’t_ -

“Janet?” He calls, raggedly.  

There is a pleasant ding and Janet is there. Still blond and bubbly, “Hi, Michael!”

He means to ask her to conjure a television, so he can watch some episodes of Pretty Little Liars, do some actual work. Be productive.  Instead he finds himself blurting out in a long string of words:

 “Are demon’s alive?”

Leaking is what Eleanor had said. _Was this leaking again?_

“Technically no.” She blinks.

“What about Janets?”

“Definitely no.” A smile of certainty.

“But I can be retired, and you can be decommissioned?”

“Correct.” Less certain.

“Does that seem odd to you?”

“A little!” Janet concedes brightly. Michael can’t see her face.

 She makes him a television without being asked and then pops away.

Michael sits and just breaths.

The next day in the light, things don’t feel so horrible. He is sitting next to Eleanor on the bench where he suddenly remembers that Chidi and her both comforted him.

 _Huh?_ Did they do that because they were afraid he would blow their cover- or?

_Or..?_

_Is that the difference then_? He wonders. _Between demons and humans?_ _That humans are not alone in their dread?_

Was he the only demon like this?

He tells Eleanor, “Thank you for pulling me out of my funk.”

He does not ask her: _Why am I like this?  Why does dying feel like a memory?_

But he wonders all the same.

 

* * *

 

“Can demon’s memories be erased.” Chidi asks one day after lessons.

“No.” Michael says maybe to fast, almost biting his lip.

“Would they tell you if they could do that kind of thing?”

“Yes.” 

“How can you be so certain?”

“I… I just am!”

“Well, I am certain I have never had my memories erased, but here we are.”

“Yeah…” Michael sighs, a cold creeping into his meatsuit’s heart, as he leans over to copy Tahani’s answers for the philosophy homework, “Here we are.”

 

* * *

 

Dreaming was something the humans talked about to the point where Michael wants to try it. So, he closes his eyes and does. It takes a few nights to figure it out.

It goes like this:

Michael doesn’t remember being born but he does remember being.

Remembers looking out across the nine dimensions out onto the universe, enraptured with its splendor and glory.

Remembers asking: “Who am I?” This was his first question.

“Michael,” a voice had said.

That felt right.

“Yes?” Michael answered.

“Don’t screw it up, again!” Came a yell, then confusion, then blinding pain.

When he wakes up shaking, he makes a note to never try dreaming again.

 

* * *

  

Chidi hands him a piece of lined paper and a pen.

“Okay, so I think it would be a good idea to write down everything you consider important in your life. Every person, everything, and every action.”

“Easy!” Michael says brandishing the pen with a flutter.

“Really? I would have thought this assignment would be really difficult for an immortal being.”

“I –“

  _I’m amazing_ , is what Michael wanted to say but instead he just made a show of scribbling until Chidi was called over to help Jason.

 When he was alone and able to concentrate, nothing came.

I’m a functionally timeless being… so how….” A familiar feeling of shame and frustration curled low in his chest.

 _That's the problem with eternity-_ a voice echoed.

“Say, Chief, I have some fake torture stuff I have to deal with so I am going to take this one for the road.

“Sure.” Chidi says placidly, if he notices Michael’s increased perspiration he is too polite to say.

For the next day and a half, he agonizes over the assignment.

**Made stars**

**Pet Spider-Dogs**

**Tortured humans**

**Got promoted**

**Made the Fake Good Place**

 

But out of all that, humans were apparently supposed to be good and the fake Good Place got found out 803 times.

One of those times by _Jason._

Michael seethed. 

_Was that it? Was that all it was?_

That couldn’t be right.

But, it kind of was… there was nothing that really stood out to him except for the humans themselves.

Eventually he wrote down the human case numbers, remembered belatedly that names were important- erased the numbers, and wrote the four human’s names out along with Janet’s.

He also wrote down frozen yogurt, paperclips, and the first executed Architect.

He did not turn in the assignment.

 

* * *

  

He tries harder on the _les Misérables_ assignment, Chidi doesn’t seem particularly happy about that one either.

Soon everything feels _wrong, wrong, wrong_ and it grates on him.

“Just tell me the right answer!” He begs.

“There- is no _one_ right answer.” Chidi tells him and Michael wants to scream, HOW CAN THAT BE!? Instead he tortures Chidi.

 He doesn’t really plan to, he just feels dumb and wants something familiar.

The first trolley is just for fun.

But the second trolley car _IS_ torture.

And it feels _fantastic._

Chidi has no idea and it’s delicious to see him worry and panic for a minute because the answers won’t come.

_See how it feels!_

This is natural he thinks, laughing again at the fake slaughter he created. This was known, and he understood it intimately. All the sensations and feelings of a carefully crafted rouse. These kinds of plans are what he was made for, and when a plan came together it felt like…

Well-

 It was very much how he imagined a wolf would feel who was let into the chicken coop.

Still, something in his stomach flip flopped when he raised his fingers to snap and neither Chidi or Eleanor flinched.

_They should, shouldn’t they?_

_Be nervous of him at least?_

_He was a bad guy..._

Yet, here they were perfectly happy to run the simulation again. They were _generally_ nervous sure, and Chidi was shaking in his blood covered boots, but it wasn’t because he was afraid of _Michael._

 _Huh,_ the demon realized, clenching his teeth.

He didn’t actually want them to be.

But the lessons were still horrible, and this still felt _so good_ so he continues until Eleanor looks at him like she looked at him every time she declared that this was the Bad Place.

“This is torture, isn’t it?” Eleanor asks, because she always knows.

Michael laughs, fast and nervous but also terribly amused. This is what they wanted wasn’t it? They didn’t possibly think he would be good at this? He wasn’t an angel!

They were setting him up for failure.

_He was a failure._

So, why fail their system when he could leave on his own terms.

“It’s fine!” Michael had protested later when Eleanor came into his office.

“You are just like me.” She tells him, in a huge release of unsolicited sincerity.

He doesn’t say _I know_ , out loud because Michael had never been like someone else before.

It was an odd feeling.

 

* * *

 

After a few minutes of moping, panic sets in.

If Chidi doesn’t forgive him then he will never learn ethics and the humans will turn against him and he will die.

_Would they let him die?_

_I let them die._ He knows, _I killed them over and over._

Michael frets and then breaths.

He tries to think what would Eleanor do to fix the situation.

“Bribes!” He tells Janet who just smiles at him and helps make what he thinks each human will like best. It’s laughably easy. He would have forgiveness in no time.

Only the opposite-tortures idea _doesn’t_ go well.

“What do you want!” He is lashing out more, mocking Chidi as he stands in front of his desk, knowing so much more than Michael, somehow despite everything Michael had ever been told.

Despite the burning library.

_Tell me something you don’t know._

_How to feel-_

With horror, Michael realizes that some part of him wants Chidi to tell him 'you are beyond saving'- That this whole thing was pay back and a sick joke, that humans were exactly as bad as he was taught and that they truly hated him.

“Do you really want me (a monster) to apologize?” He says in his own complicated way.

“Yes.” Chidi says in his.

It was a response Michael was not prepared for.

Because this was _forgiveness_ and being forgiven means you aren’t past saving.

“What?” Michael gulps and blinks trying and failing to see the trick. Something breaks within him.

“Oh Chidi,” He says with as much sincerity as he knows how, “I am sorry, you are smarter and know more about ethics than me, so I got frustrated and lashed out.”

_You aren’t stupid, I am. It’s me._

Chidi doesn’t rub his superiority in, he doesn’t burn out Michael’s eyes or laugh, instead he just smiles patiently and says to rejoin class.

Until this point in time Michael had never understood what a second chance was.

He sobbed.

 

* * *

 

 It’s a moment of quiet in one of the happier resets.

Chidi lays next to Eleanor. She breaths deeply in near-sleep. It probably is the safest either of them had felt since they had come to the Medium-Place- for what was apparently the 5th time.

They need to sleep. It’s safe, they have the time and yet, Chidi’s mind races. Everything he had every learned about demons and theology runs through his mind.

He stays that way for several hours, watching the eeriness of a sunlight that never changes. Eleanor stretches beside him.

Unthinkingly he says, “Do you think the devil brought anyone down with him when he fell?”

In a disjointed voice, Eleanor kicks him in the shin and says, “Vee alls thalls mmm’gether.”

“What?”

“We all fall.”

“Together?”

“Yes!” Her eyes open slightly, “Together.”

“What about the devil? Do you think the devil fell alone?”

It’s such an odd question, but after an intense reading of _Paradise Lost_ , not an entirely unprovoked one.

“Nope! We fell with him too!” Then she kisses him with all the passion of someone who knows their time is limited.

“Maybe we all have a little devil inside us, huh?” Chidi grinned kissing her back.

“He’s my type!” She laughs.

Later Michael asks Chidi the same question about the devil falling alone. It’s a quiet night on Earth and the stars are out. They hadn’t just read Milton so the question really felt like it was out of nowhere.

Despite that, Chidi smiles not knowing why he had an answer ready to go. Maybe it was Déjà vu? Regardless, he confidently answers: “Together, man.”

“Always together.”  
  
Michael smiles, bumps his shoulder, and takes his hand.

 

* * *

 

“Janet.”

“Hi, Michael!” Janet says as she pops in. She is holding a bunch of cotton candy, presumably for Jason.

“I have a question.”

“I have all the answers.”

“Okay, well… this is a test but, Janet, do you know what happened to the very first Janet?”

“What do you mean? She was eventually rebooted, and her collective consciousness makes up the foundation for all new Janets.”

“Okay, but why was she rebooted? What was the initial issue?”

“I- oh huh… that’s odd. One second while I preform a defrag.”

An expression of deep concentration, replaced by a flicker of consternation, “I’m sorry, Michael, but that file is corrupted.”

 “It’s okay.” Michael said thinking about a different Janet who refused to burn him and was probably burned in his place, “That was the test.”

He sighs, dwarfed by all the broken things in the universe, “I think I may know why anyway.”

 

* * *

 

 Janet says ‘kill me’ when the neighbourhood starts to glitch.

 “Here is a paperclip.”

 _Are paperclips meant to kill?_ Michael rubbed the clip uncomprehending.

“What if Vicky finds out?” He asks, “Why are you making a big deal about this?” Janet answers equally uncomprehending at his inability to marbleize her.

He has never failed to inflict pain or malice before.

“I just- because, because… the reason is friends!”

 _“I don’t have friends.”_ he had told Jason once upon a time. Now he marveled how that could have ever been true.

“You’ve met me countless times and our relationship became important.” He tells her. He doesn’t say she never treated him like a demon. Even after she knew he was one.

“You’ve reset me before. A new Janet can help you.”

 _A new Janet, huh?_ That was objectively true. It didn’t matter what Janet helped them, but then he thought of the office and the Janet who had thrown away his missing document requests.

He hadn’t fully realized it at the time, but she probably saved his life.

_Had they thrown her out?_

_Where they going to throw him out when they realized the mess he had made?_

The thought was truly unbearable.

“You are my oldest and truest friend. _I can’t replace you_.”

They share a moment after that. Michel has to sit down, but Janet insists, “You still have to kill me.”

Michael silently whimpers and gets Eleanor.

“What’s going on?” She asks.

“Janet can explain.” Michael says, throat feeling tight and coarse.

Eleanor and Janet go off somewhere and when Janet comes back she continues to do the impossible,“Eleanor told me to get ‘it’ so I did!”

“What’s ‘it’?”

“Unclear.”

“She also said I was acting like a person. So, I made Derek!”

A strange Janet-like man pinged into the room.

“Derek!” The thing parroted like a Pokémon.

Michael blinked, highly disturbed.

“Did-did you make a person?”

“Yes.”

Janet’s couldn’t make people- but demons weren’t supposed to make friends, so Michael decided to just let this one go.

Then, in a bolt of realization, he remembers that that _they are trying desperately to stay alive_ and not be found out by the other demons.

\--A new person who appeared out of the void is _extremely_ noticeable.

Noticeable equated death, and they always _know,_ somehow, when the rules are broken.

He panics and doesn’t know what to do, but once again his human friends do, and they use empathy and compassion to solve the situation instead of murder and it’s SO WEIRD.

But it works. So, Michael is left in his office alone and feeling, once again, wrong footed.

They don’t even really ruin anyone’s happiness with the truth.

It’s just so foreign, but Michael doesn’t much want to keep lashing out. So, instead he just sits while the buzzing in his brain gets louder.

 _I don’t want to be alone_ he thinks, his mind feeling like thunder.

A voice reminds him, _you don’t have to be._

_You have friends._

He stands up and goes to find Eleanor.

To Eleanor, Janet being a person made sense, she was going through a break up and was hurting. Eleanor knew exactly what to do about that, but when Michael came in to chat with her she was surprised, but pleasantly so.

“You really just wanted to chat?”

“I guess so.”

“That’s so human of you.” She says, and it makes Michael smile and the din inside him stop. He’s never felt part of a group before. Even though that is what he was built for.

 _Things don’t have to have a purpose_ , he reminds himself, and for the first time maybe believes it isn’t a bad thing.

 

* * *

 

“Janet.” He breaths. His voice is steady, but he feels shaky like he has just been crying.

“Yes?”

“Demon’s and Janet’s aren’t technically alive, are they?”

“No, but we are not technically dead either.” It’s a concession from their last conversation.

Michael hums thinking. He looks up, for the first time in a long time.

It feels good.

For a moment he just… _feels._

Days later, under a different set of stars Michael asks, “Can demon’s have their memories erased?”

“All living things can have their memories taken.” Janet says, and there is a hollowness there that is usually absent. A tightness that should not exist.

 “I took yours.” Michael says but now it is just Janet’s turn to hum.

“Computer’s can have their memories erased.” She shrugs.

“But they can’t get married!”

“No,” Janet is grinning in a way that Michael finds he is only just understanding, “I suppose not.”

“I think we might be freaks.”

Janet doesn’t really laugh but she doesn’t refute the observation, so it’s close enough.

 

* * *

 

When Shawn is in his office and promotes him, he feels good. He’s never really been promoted before, it a way that recognized him for real, but after a moment he remembers that Shawn doesn’t care about him- that it’s a lie.

That it’s _all_ an elaborate lie.

 _Things don’t have to have a purpose,_ he reminds himself again looking over at his bowl of paperclips, _they can be a bracelet or a murder weapon._

He knows abruptly he doesn’t have to be either.

It was somewhat nonsensical, but the choice was easier than he thought.

The fact he had a choice was something he never knew he would ever willingly fight to defend.

_But what if the humans sell him out? What if they think he betrayed them?_

He could run. He could run right now.

But Eleanor had called him human. Said he was like her. 

He gulps. This was putting a lot on other people. He gulps again, the not-air suddenly feeling thin.

He didn’t have Janet. They have no doubt already seized her.

This place is a lie, it’s always a lie, and yet the humans always figure it out. So, _could they figure out a different lie if he helps them?_

“Clues, clues… I need clues.” He says rubbing his human forehead.

_Why are humans so bad at clues!?_

He thought about the paranoia at the office, he thought about hiding, and then hiding in plain sight.

“I know what to do.” He told the universe. And for the first time this statement was true.

Panic seizes him as he sets everything up, in a way, this is the first time since building the Fake Good Place that he feels like a real Architect again. Part of a grand design, part of an eternity that only he can see.

It’s laughably easy to frame Vicky. He just imagines what he is afraid of, and then uses her name.

 _Names are important,_ he grins wickedly, but doesn’t stop.

He suddenly finds himself at the party. It’s chaos distilled, and he is giving a speech about how his human friends deserved the torture that they got.

 _You don’t,_ he wants to tell them, _please just listen to what I’m really saying._

_Listen to me!_

No one has ever really listened to him before, he realizes. He though the approval for this project was the big break he was looking for, but it was never really about _him_. It was about how a cog, could make the machine it was part of, run minutely faster.

_Do they trust me?_

_Could they trust me?_

His heart was pounding.

But the answer isn’t an automatic no, so he does his best to save them anyway.

When the train pulled away and all five of them were fine. He has to take a moment to comprehend that his plan worked.

_Everything is fine._

They look up at him, the three other humans look vaguely confused, but Eleanor seems pleased.

“I told you.” She says, as if vindicated. The cool certainty that he was lying replaced with a different expression- trust mostly. It made everything about her look different, younger and more sparkly.

“YOU GUYS!” He has cried before, but never over others. It’s horrible, his chest is tight and all the stress and worry of earlier is poring out of him uncontrollably, “You’re my friends and I wanted to save you so badly.” He confesses his whole-body convulsing.  

 _I didn’t think I could_ , He doesn’t say, _please, please_ - _I didn’t fail._

She hugs him, really hugs him and suddenly he doesn’t feel so overwhelmed with the enormity of what he has done.

 _I just betrayed my own kind,_ Michael blinks, but holds on to Eleanor tighter. He thinks about her and the others, thinks about how they were all together and that they had _trusted_ him.

He blinks,  _or maybe I didn’t._

They sat around him after discussing what went right and wrong, chattering away happily over their shared cleverness.

Their proximity was intoxicating.

He enjoyed it for as long as he could before he remembered that he had _no_ escape plan.

Dread blossomed in his heart. 

“Oh.”

They would hate him over this.

 

* * *

 

 It’s not working. He built the balloon to buy time, but it’s _not working._

“What’s after-sad?” He asks because he’s just made everything _worse. I ruin everything!_

The humans are not happy when he explains. If they were demons, they would definitely retire him, and that was another sad thought all on its own.

“How many times are you going to betray us?” Tahani asks.

“I’m sorry, I really am. And I know it was morally wrong now.” He admits in not so many words.

Then something else occurs to him, _what if they think this is another kind of torture?_

“It’s not torture!” Michael yelps frantically biting back a cry, “It’s not torture, I promise.” His chest was pounding, and he hated it but not as much as himself. “I just couldn’t do it, I tried. The balloon isn’t torture.” _I’m not betraying you_ , he wanted to scream.

For a second, he imagined the humans turning against him. He doesn’t know how they would, but anyway they could dream up how to hurt him, he would let them.

“It’s okay, Michael, I’m not mad… just disappointed.”

“That’s worse! Everyone knows that’s worse!” But it’s not because they don’t turn away. The pounding in his chest lessens somewhat.

“You still go to the real Bad Place and I still get retired,” he says like it’s a consolation, even though it absolutely isn't.

It’s a crushing defeat but then Eleanor says, “Heck, let’s get drunk and have a party!” It’s not really a solution but it’s the best idea they have so, they do. She invites Michael without a thought.

 _Even after I failed?_ He wants to ask, but instead just nods. _Maybe they just want me around so they can watch me, so I don't do anything sneaky like call Shawn_.

A reward for failure seems impossible.

He sits to the side, watching as the humans come to term with their own issues with each other. Then, as the evening reaches a high point, Chidi cheers him.

Eleanor tells him, “It’s not your fault, you tried your best.”

He just stares at her.

 _I failed. You should be killing me,_ he wants to tell her, _you should hate me._

“We made you this gift, you are an honorary human now.”

 _They don’t like us keeping human things,_ he thinks, but abruptly realizes there is no one who can stop him now, and then laughs.

“This is all garbage I have no real use for,” he says touched.

“Welcome to being human,” They say, and then, “To Michael!” Their glasses raised, sparkling in the neon lights.

They dance, and drink, and it feels like a last supper before execution, but it also feels like freedom.

Michael knows for a fact he has never been happier.

Then he tells them about the judge and they are willing to go right into the Bad Place on a suicide mission just to try.

“Okay.” Michael agrees despite himself, still feeling shaky and dwarfed by the protective feelings coursing through him, “Okay- call a train.” 

 

* * *

  

Their plan, while not initially bad, of course devolves into both a gong-show and an epic cinematic chase.

 _They can’t possibly make it,_ Michael knows as they approach the portal, _not all of them._

He had always been fascinated by the human story about the fall of man, but until now, he had never understood the story about sacrificing one’s self to save the others.

But he understood it now. It wasn’t so different - it was still a rebellion.

“I figured it out,” He tells Eleanor, “The trolley problem.”

She fights him, not wanting him to do what he was about to do.

No one had ever _not_ wanted him to die like that. He blinks and then pushes her through the portal.

She reaches for him, but he doesn’t take her hand.

It’s Shawn who catches up to him.

“Hey bossman, he grins suddenly feeling powerful, knowing in a way he has won, “What’s up?”

 

* * *

 

After the interrogation he decisively no longer feels powerful.

They have Janet.

“This is a mistake.” He tries to argue with Shawn, “The humans deserve the Good Place.”

Shawn just scoffs and leads him to an unmarked room.

“If you like human’s so much I’ll torture you like one.”

_What?_

_They would just leave him in a room forever?_

He imagines himself in the room with nothing but magazines for a million years. It’s horrible, only it doesn’t happen because Shawn only thinks of things in terms of rules and certainties. Everything has a place and is as it is meant to be. He never had to deal with mutants or freaks before.

Like a demon with friends.

Or a Janet who could lie.

Who could _hurt._

“It’s me! Janet!” The Bad Place Janet says, and Michael has never loved an angel more in his life.

 

* * *

 

“Janet?” He asks much later, after he sends the humans down to Earth and sets them on the right path of meeting each other.

“What’s up?” Janet says cheerfully next to him.

“How many demons are locked in rooms in the Bad Place?”

Her smile slips for a fraction of a second.

“The exact figure is unknown to me, but I can make a calculated guess using the volume of the building.”

Michael hesitated.

“Is it a lot?”

“It… is.”

Maybe a lot of people are unhappy with how the Bad Place is run. Maybe there are angels too, who are too polite for burning ladles?

_Are they just there… rotting away because they… had questions?_

The implication sits heavy in his gut.

There is no time to sit and pontificate though he must meet the judge and argue his human’s cases. Which he does to a degree of success.

 “I’m just feeling kinda funky today!” Judge Gen says cheerfully as she snaps her fingers, creating a new timeline just for them. It never occurred to Michael to be unnerved by that kind of power before, “Yeah, me too.” He whispers under his breath.

 

* * *

 

In the new timeline, he gets to save the humans, so they can live longer and better lives. It’s such an odd feeling to reduce suffering instead of prolonging it- it’s an even odder feeling to play saviour. He wonders vaguely if he was the first demon ever to try.

“I didn’t know I could save people.” Michael admits to Janet while they read their notes. _I also didn’t know I could make friends on my own,_ he thought imagining the Doorman and the frog thermos.

“You saved Eleanor earlier in the Bad Place,” Janet reminds him.

“Huh, I guess I did.” He vows he won’t fail them. He had forsaken everything he has ever known for them, he had to keep them safe- _he just had to._

Only he can’t stop himself from going back to Earth several times, and because he is on Earth several times he screws everything up _again._

_Don’t screw it up again! A voice had yelled him once, and his whole body had erupted with pain._

“I’ve doomed you.” He tells them, absolutely shattered.

“It’s okay.” Eleanor responds, even though it is not.

They all panic and do crazy things, but when the dust settles all four of them decide they want to keep doing the right thing.

 _You are miraculous,_ Michael doesn’t say, but thinks it the whole way to Florida.

* * *

  

“I want to see my memories, man!” Eleanor insists, and Michael is suddenly faced with a horrible dilemma. The memories would help Eleanor understand but then she would see him in all his cruelty. 

In the end though, he can’t deny her and so gives in with little fight. The chances were good she wouldn’t turn away from him now, not in the middle of their crusade against the point system.

He inoculates her, shows her, and then waits.

She must still be a little fried because she is focusing on the wrong things.

“I’m sorry I was so cruel.” He blurts, cutting through her ramblings.

“I can’t be mad at a demon for being evil.” And it’s just a shrug.

_You can’t help it, I forgive you._

_But didn’t you see how I disregarded you! Didn’t you see how I disregarded your love and connection as nothing?_

She did and she didn’t care.

The absolution is…

Breathtaking. 

It’s not exactly healthy though.

“It’s determinism.” She says, eyes growing dull and then fever bright.

“What?”

She reads from a high school Philosophy 101 book and all Michael can think about is puppet masters, and a million small slights that make you do and say things you never thought you could.

That make you into a _demon_.

He’s horrified.

“No!” Is all he can say, because it’s wrong, and he knows that it feels wrong now. He can’t explain it, but all this isn’t some meticulous plan. It’s the absence of one.

_No one made me keep those files._

_No one wanted him to pick the humans._

He hadn’t wanted to learn Eleanor’s name.

 _“Do you want to know my name?_ ”

No, no, a thousand times no!- But he didn’t turn away.

That was _his_ choice. 

 

* * *

 

Being at the restaurant with Eleanor was painful for both of them, but he understood why now.

“Maybe it’s a mega demon!” Eleanor had said, spiraling off into her own mind.

And well, maybe it was? But Eleanor wasn’t babbling like this on purpose, she was just frustrated and scared.

 _I was frustrated and scared,_ he blinks, letting the empathy wash through him before it abruptly turned to cool anger.

 “You have to be kidding… I have free will!” He shocks himself with how vehemently he defends himself. How angry he is with Eleanor for suggesting otherwise.

What this all was, what it was all for.

He dumps ice tea on her head.

After that they go to the airport and pick up the others, and it is just Michael for a second, alone while Eleanor runs ahead. He allows himself a second to fall apart.

 _You can’t help it, I forgive you._ She had said.

 _But I do care about them_ , he thought impossibly.

 _Can I help it then? Am I really a demon?_ He hasn’t felt the need to torture any humans in a long time.

It made him question why anyone was even torturing humans at all.

_Was it his nature? What did it mean if it was?_

_I forgive you._

In all their infinite capacity for atrocity and general dickishness, humans still had the ability to forgive. Forgive each other, forgive their torturer, forgive an ancient evil.

Forgive _him._

The other demons never looked at him the way the humans and Janet did, and he never hurt them once.

_So, why…?_

It was- _different_. He had no other words for it.

“Hey, Mikey! I think I see them!” It’s Eleanor, back at his side, “They are coming through the gate now.”

“So, they are.” He smiles, watery and happy despite his hind-brain echoing the question: _Why can’t the afterlife forgive them?_

At the car she apologizes again, and he shrugs because it is human nature to make mistakes.

If she can forgive his nature, then he can forgive hers.

* * *

 

They have a party.

Because it seems humans are always having parties.

“It really is too bad none of the philosophers or theologians ended up in the afterlife with us. It would have been really amazing to talk to them about the nature of the Good Place and Bad Place.” Chidi sighed dreamily. “Like I am an atheist, but it would be so intriguing to have access all the different perspectives. “

“Hey, I like talking about dumb human stuff!” Michael danced past, a trumpet hanging limply from his hand.

Chidi laughed, happy and drunk, “I guess arguing with an angel about theology is a pretty close second.”

“Demon.” He gently corrected. _Chidi just misspoke- that was it. Nothing to think too deeply about._

“Oh, sorry man, I guess that’s pretty insensitive.”

He waved Chidi and the blossoming warmth in his chest off.

“Eleanor actually told me that once… She said Michael was an angel name.”

“I mean, yeah, in traditional Christian beliefs Michael is a pretty big deal. Originally a healer, he became the patron saint of soldiers and warriors.” Chidi started into lecture mode, pushing up his glasses.

Michael tried to listen, but his mind was a million miles away.

_“A demon with an angel name, it’s funny.”_

_“You have a warped sense of humor-”_

_“Do you want to know mine?”_

“Sometimes depicted as a Christ figure, Michael helped to create the Earth and lead God’s army against evil.

_Evil?_

_But what really was evil?_ Once upon a time he thought it was humans.

Then he thought it was him.

Now he thinks it is systems and machines.

 _“No, thank you.”_ – he had been so scared for some reason so unsettled. Please don’t tell me, you shouldn’t have names at all.

_“It’s Eleanor.”_

_“Why did you tell me?”_

_“Names are important.”_

And of course, it’s so easy to understand now, names made you a _person- an individual._

“Hmmm.” Michael squinted, trying to sort through his words carefully, but gave up halfway through when he remembered Chidi wouldn’t throw him into a sun for asking, “She said there was an angel once, who became a demon...”

_“What if I don’t want to be reassigned?”_

“Oh yeah! That’s Lucifer. Originally an angel, he was cast out of heaven for his sin of pride. It’s another name for the devil- He was the serpent who tempted the first humans to leave the garden of Eden.”

“And fall.” Michael twitched, then more casually: “Say, what caused the fall?”

 _“Everyone gets reassigned,”_ The voice had sneered.

 “An apple.” Chidi grinned as if something was funny, “But mostly wisdom and free will.”

“I kinda like that.” Michael laughs along.

 

* * *

  

Despite the vow to never dream again, Michael tries one more time.

The half formed and fuzzy memory that comes to him, is Eleanor’s confession. Or at least some version of it.

It’s baffling at first.

“It’s because of me. I don’t belong here.” Eleanor, poor-selfish Eleanor stood up, gazing down at him, like she was ready to be executed.

She looked at him like a martyr looked at a lion. It kind of made him feel like a bug.

He just stared back, trying to keep his face from twitching.

This is impossible.

 _I was so careful, I set up the perfect parameters._ _The rules were flawless, how dare you destroy my forever- My cosmos!_

Then he is scrambling and trying to salvage what he can of the situation. He thinks he does a good job with Vicky and the others, but it’s not enough.

_It’s never enough._

“I’m so stupid!” Michael had howled at the phony sky, angry for a second before his passion turned cool and dead like burnt out coals.

How dumb and foolish was he? He really thought he could make his own cosmos- his own infinity where he said exactly when and how things happened.

He had been horrified at his failure, but never stopped to think how truly and completely unspeakable it would have been if he had actually succeeded.

Janet would later call it a dumb feeding machine.

Everything in it a puppet on a string, in a cage while trapped on a tread mill in chains. Each wretched creature blind to their fate, and he- despite any megalomania- no different.

 

* * *

 

“Hey Janet?” Michael breaths, as something jagged in him smoothed out, “I have a question… Do you remember that room Shawn tried to lock me in?”

She is already paying attention- Already happy to answer something that will certainly get him killed.

“Yes.”

“And you remember how you think there are other demons and maybe angels there?”

“Yes.”

“How many freed demons do you think it would take to… let’s say, cause a revolution?”

He expects to be laughed at or arrested somehow. Either way, Janet’s response still catches him off guard.

“Just one!”

She is looking directly at him like he is made of starlight, goodness, and sound decisions, “Just one!” She repeats like a fact, and then softer, “just… one.”

Later in accounting when he is so at a loss he can hardly speak, she tells him again: “It has to be you.”

And while he is scared, angry, and confused at the injustice of it all, he agrees.

He can’t think of anything he wouldn’t do to save his family.

 

* * *

 

One of the most jarring aspects of the Good Place is that they do not automatically recognize him as a demon.

“Huh.” Michael says dizzily, he didn’t think he would classify them as not-demon if they were in the Bad Place.

 _What makes us so different then_? He has to stop and question, only his reverie is broken when one of the Good Place employees says: “ _Those_ demons.” like they are- like he _is_ \- something disgusting.

“Not all of them are so bad,” he defends and all at once he wants to cry because his humans and Janet never judged him like this, they never made him feel so _lesser_ ; and yet these were the people judged worthy of the Good Place?

It seemed rigged.

“It has to be the Bad Place.” He tells them wretchedly, but quickly realizes that inaction and bureaucracy is a special kind of Bad Place all on its own.

“521 years…” He exhales feeling small.

 _This isn’t right,_ he thinks, mind full of stagnant and dead things. 

 

* * *

  

The first time he had gone to Earth he had asked the Doorman,“What’s the significance of the frog?” 

“I just like frogs.” Came the defensive reply. 

“Huh.” _They weren’t supposed to like human things._

Michael blinked.

Any thought of the conversation goes out of his head because _everything_ on Earth is louder and more confusing than he ever thought possible.

After saving his humans, he had felt the cloying creep of panic, so he ducked into a store. 

 The presence of gum ball machines distract him immediacy from his anxiousness. He sticks a coin into a metal device and cranks the dial. 

A colourful gum ball popped out into his hand.

Only it wasn’t just a gum ball- _not really._

The amount of work that went into that one piece of candy was staggering: Someone had to actually invent it, assemble the ingredients, market it to make it popular, make a demand so that people would want it, design the machine, mass produce the parts, buy the parts from around the world, assemble them here in this very store that he happened to be in this moment, maintain it so that it worked, test it, refill it, and who knows what else...

It was a miniature cosmos, an absolute miracle. 

“Stupendous!” He twisted his head around to see if anyone else had witnessed what he had.

It seemed as if no one was paying attention. They were busy buying coffee and looking bleary eyed.  
  
He still can’t figure it out for a long time.

When he speaks with Tahani it all makes sense.

The bombs were built into the foundation- everything had been rigged from the _very start._

_—Everyone is reassigned._

_—Did you hear? He was retired._

Don’t question the cancer.

It's just like how no one questioned  _the gumball._

“There are so many unintended consequences!” He shouts blinking at the grandness of it all, the scope and size of the travesty that was modern life.

“I know what I have to do.” He says, and for the second time in his life it’s true. As he pushes forward to call Judge Gen, he catches a glimpse of his reflection in a shiny surface.

His eyes have that same unidentifiable spark in them. For a second Michael confuses them with starlight.

They go to IHOP and he strikes another impossible deal.

“We’ll do it.” He tells them, but the shaking uncertainty of it all is making everything feel like it’s too much. Like the world is too bright and too loud, to the point where he wished it would just go away for a while.

“We’ll prove humans can be good.” He says with more finality and means it. He doesn’t have a desk anymore to keep the Book of Doug he stole, but none-the-less he grips a stolen page from it tight like a good luck talisman.

 

* * *

  

It’s not enough though.

_It’s never enough._

 

* * *

  

Michael breathed, shaky in the aftermath of his panic attack. He was an office worker- middle management! He wasn’t built for any of this.

Wasn’t meant for any of the implication amid these huge systemic problems.

“I’m going to torture your precious humans.” Shawn had said, “And I am going to use you to do it.”

Then it was Vicky grinning at him with his own face.

Maybe Shawn wasn’t so basic after all, because the thought of what Vicky would do to his family in revenge was devastating.

_Is this fear? Is this what fear feels like?_

If they survived, they would never be able to trust him again! The thought of Eleanor looking at him like a monster stopped the words in his chest. The thought of Chidi thinking he was beyond the reach of ethics made him gag.

_Could he throw up? Was this body physically capable?_

It seemed like he might soon find out.

There was also Tahani and Jason to think about. Not to mention Janet! Would Vicky marbleize her? They knew she was rouge.

“Hey Michael! It’s time!” Eleanor called him, “Our first guy is here.”

She had given him a pep talk, it was probably a good one too- but it didn’t change the fact that he couldn’t hear or breath. All he could feel was an overwhelming chasm of anxiety.

_Could a heart retire itself?_

It seemed likely.  

He blanked out, for a second all the white made him feel like his mind had been wiped once again. But no- it was nothing so blissful.

When he was aware again, it was Eleanor sitting in his chair directing everyone where to go.

It’s stunning in a way, she looks like a real Architect.

 _“Do you think humans would make good architects?”_ He had asked a lifetime ago.

In a daze his mind wanders to the origin of angels and demons. They were all once Architects, but had they ever been human?

The answer to his question had been no, but most answers to Michael’s questions were lies.

He wants to tell Eleanor, but he is still trying desperately to pull himself together.

\--Then Simone is there, and EVERYTHING is a catastrophe.

“They can’t be allowed to do this.” He begs Judge Gen, but of course they _are._ They have always been allowed to take away what he holds dear.

 

* * *

  

Erasing Chidi’s memory was-

Well.

 _Painful_ is probably the best word.

 _I’ve done this hundreds of times. It shouldn’t be any different._ He tells himself.

Only it is.

It really, _really_ is.

 _Anguish? Is this anguish?_ He can’t decide if it is or if it is something worse. He’s felt anguish before he is sure, so this had to be worse.

The two of them sit in his office, both trying to swallow the gravity of the situation.

“That movie was really nice.” Chidi tries, chatting pleasantly.

Michael can barely hear him over the roaring in his ears and the pain in his chest.

“We don’t actually have to do this you know…” Michael blurts.

“I’ve done the math. I’ve weighted all the options, and I’ve made up my mind- there are no other alternatives.”

“There can be. We can find them.”

Chidi smiled, slow and sad, “Not this time.”

“But you Tahani and Jason….and AND Eleanor!” He gestures wildly, all his cells in protest.

Chidi was infuriatingly calm, Michael was suddenly reminded of a man sitting in a burning library staring at him with brand new eyes.

Michael almost flinched away. ‘ _It’s not torture!’_ he almost says but the words die on his lips, because yeah, it kind of is.

“I know. But we still have a chance this way.”

Michael raised his fingers to snap, maybe he should do it fast- like a band-aid. Chidi once again did not move to stop him.

“Are-are you sure?” Michael rasped curling his outstretched fingers into a fist. He’s reminded abruptly of Janet chanting ‘kill me, kill me’.

“Yeah.”

“I feel sorry for you. I-I know how now, so I do.”

“That’s good, bud.”

Silence stretches between them. Objectively this shouldn’t be any different then the other times the humans had to have their memories erased.

But somehow when it was just Chidi it made Michael feel powerless and afraid.

 “I tortured you and everyone even before the Fake Good Place.” Michael confesses, pent up emotions gushing out in strange ways, “You all made me ask questions and question who and what I was, so I chose to punish you all for that. I’m really sorry, I-I… didn’t know.”

What he didn’t know isn’t exactly clear- didn’t _know that humans could be so wonderful (but he did know, he used to think that once upon a time didn’t he?)_

_That they would be his friends? That demons could even have friends?_

_What were lies and what were truths…_

“I never told any of you before. I’m so sorry. I think- I think I was just so scared. I am scared.”

“We are all victims of the system, Michael…. I think everyone is. Me, you, Eleanor, Tahani, Jason, Janet… It’s messed up… But we can’t do anything if I remember and blow the whole experiment.”

Tiredly Michael nods.

“You sacrificed yourself for us once. It’s just my turn now.” It always comes back to that trolley problem somehow.

“I don’t want you to have to!” Michael finds himself across the room somehow, hugging Chidi.

It’s his first hug that he ever gave. He hopes he’s doing it right.

He’s sobbing grossly. Chidi lets him and hugs back, “It will be okay.”

Michael doesn’t believe him but still nods. With the taste of faith on his tongue, he snaps his fingers.

 

* * *

 

“I feel like just another product on an assembly line.” Michael blurts wretchedly, missing Chidi so much that his feelings leaked from him like a burst pipe. He had done it again after all, hadn't he? Taken away something good, like all demons do. 

Janet raises her eyebrows and shows him her serial number. 

Face reddening he turns away, “I guess that was an insensitive and embarrassing thing to say.” 

“No, not really.” She responds looking up through Michael into the cosmos beyond, “Not really at all.”

 

* * *

 

Eleanor welcomes Chidi and its as painful than he thinks it will be.

 _I did this 802 times, what’s 803? H_ e thinks, letting a wave of shame wash over him. However, amid the acid feeling of shame was a kernel of hope.

 _Chidi remembered all 802 times._ Both he and the others hold onto that fact like a talisman.

Despite the tragedy that is Chidi, the experiment goes as well as they can expect.

The other demons still try to hurt him, though it doesn’t go the way they want.

It was five minutes before Eleanor was laughing in Vicky’s face.

“How did you know it wasn’t me?” Michael asked later wondrously grateful that Eleanor hadn’t let the impostor replace him.

“Oh! That was easy.” She grinned, “Vicky passed a bowl of paperclips and didn’t freak out.”

“Oh.” A smile tugged at Michael’s lips, I guess I was harder to impersonate than they thought.”

 _I guess Vicky never had the thought to look at human things…_ Michael thought privately _,_ wondering how such a weakness had saved him.

 _It’s not really a weakness though._ Michael frowned. Mad that he would still think that way even in the privacy of his own thoughts.

With a pang, Michael realized that even if Vicky was curious about human things, she would have been punished.

_Had Vicky been discouraged from her curiosity? Had they all? Was that why the Bad Place had grown so basic?_

_Was it an intended or unintended consequence?_

For a moment the implications of it all crippled him, but Eleanor brought him back to the present.

“Yup! One of a kind.” Eleanor leaned on him, blissfully undisturbed that his face is what had been trying to kill her earlier.

Michael decided it was stupid that human eyes cried when they were happy as well as sad.

 

* * *

  

It’s later, much later when he is showing Tahani a memory with the ear clips, that Eleanor turns to him eyebrows quirked,

“So, you know my big confession?”

He must have looked confused because she digs a finger into his ribs and adds, “The first one.”

“Oh, yes. The one that I couldn’t predict.” Odd how a catastrophe could be a good memory now.

“Well, I was thinking about it and I really just told the truth.” She shrugs and makes an ‘ahhh’ noise like it’s lame somehow, like it is _nothing._

“Well, exactly!” His voice pitches upwards, animated but unsure how to make her understand the gravity of that action, “You _weren’t_ supposed to. You were _never_ supposed to come clean like that.”

“Huh, is that all it takes? Telling the truth when you aren’t supposed to?” She blinks, baffled.

He can tell Eleanor is thinking of ruined dresses and returned wallets, but Michael’s mind flashes back to missing documents and the slow mental pressure of _an impossible,_ and amoral job.

“I was just doing my job.” He heard that somewhere before in history, and _Huh,_ it’s as bad as it sounds.

But it makes a terrible kind of sense.

_On the job no one once asked ‘why,’ and no one once said, ‘no.’_

_It’s just a dumb feeding machine_ , Janet had said.

Eyes suddenly burning, he has to swallow fighting down a gag, “Yeah, I guess it is.”

“There is a Captain America quote about that.” Jason adds as helpful as he can be from across the room, on Tahani’s other side.

His hand is around hers, _what a weird thing to focus on._

Michael just nods absently, trying to make sense of the infinite dissected and pulled apart feelings he had been convinced he never had.

An older, more bad Janet’s face pops into him mind-half remembered, “ _You were never meant to ask for the truth.”_

Another memory comes, even older and more distorted- A voice saying: “ _You can die for it.”_

He makes an aborted movement to grab Eleanor’s hand, scared when words come tumbling out of his mouth, in an unbidden confession: “I was never meant to tell the truth either.”

Perhaps sensing his frantic unease, she reaches for him, and their fingers lock.

“Pretty sure it’s only bad guys who fear the truth, bud.”

 

* * *

  

When they are escaping the Bad Place’s trap they run into Shawn.

“I’ll win!” Shawn said grinning at Michael. Smug in a way that Michael no longer understood.

“You really think so, huh?” Michael blinked, “You seem so confident.”

“Of course, I am.”

“But… _why_?” It was if a light had gone on in Michael’s head. He had so many conflicting feelings about Shawn. Bad feelings, good feelings- it was a huge mash up he wasn’t qualified to sort through, but in this moment, everything was a sparkling crystal clear.

He felt _pity._

“Why am I better than you and will win?” Shawn scoffed uncomprehending, “It should be obvious.”

“No, just why do _this_ at all?”

“What does it matter? It is amusing.”

“But who taught you it was amusing? Who put you up to this at all? Don’t you wonder at all who is controlling you?”

“It was my idea.” Shawn growled at him, parts of an otherworldly face leaking through his human visage.

“Was it really, though? Was any of this _our_ idea?”

Shawn actually did growl, low and guttural, but also distinctly afraid.

“If you actually believed I was wrong you wouldn’t be trying to sabotage me.” He would just fail without any intervention.

Michael blinked, and _ahhh_. That was exactly it.

There needed to be intervention. 

“I understand now,” he breathed, and it was like seeing for the first time, or finding something you thought lost forever, “It wasn’t just my memories they were erasing.”

“My. Memory. Is. Perfect.” Shawn ground out.

“Yeah, bud, I thought so too.” Michael offered, hearing Chidi speak through him as he offered comfort to one of his worst enemies, “But, here we are.”

“I’m upper management. They wouldn’t erase my memory like they did _you_.”

And there it was. A confirmation he did not need.

“Why? Because _you_ are special, and the rules don’t apply to _you?_ Newsflash- Those were all things you told me!”

“Those were lies! Unlike you I actually AM!”

“Oh, Shawn…”

Is this what he had been? A shaking and afraid creature, dwarfed by the simplest truth?

This was so hard. It was like talking to himself eons ago. He had been so confused and in so so so much pain, only he didn’t know it.

Shawn didn’t know it.

“All right,” Michael put up his hands in a small placating gesture, four case files flashing through his mind, “Fine. I concede. But only if you can answer some questions.”

“Very well.”

“Who was in charge before you?”

“Excuse me?”

“The name of the demon who had your job before you.”

“It was- um Joe, something- Why would I have to know that?”

“Because names are important. Who was in charge of them?”

“That’s a dumb question.”

“Who was the first architect executed?”

“I-“

“Who executed you?”

“I was never-“

“How can you be sure?” Michael’s human face-muscles stretched wide in a painful grimace, “Once upon a time I was sure.”

“You were dangerous.”

“More dangerous than you?”

“I’m an arch-demon of course I am more powerful and dangerous than you!”

“Then why all of this! Why fight me at all?”

“It’s not you!” Shawn shouts in barely contained frustration, “It’s your ideas.”

“If your whole organization can be threatened by one peon with a new idea then maybe your organization deserves to fall.”

“These are your people!”

“We are all our people! Don’t you see! All these divisions between bad and good, angel and demon, mortal and immortal are all _made up_. You are spending your eternity defending a false empire!”

Shawn just looks at him stunned, it is not unlike Jason’s constant wide-eyes befuddlement.

Michael is panting now, questions upon questions bubbling out of him,“Why would you defend something made up?”

Shawn moves to open his mouth, but Michael cuts him off, “Don’t tell me it’s fun. Being someone’s puppet is _never_ fun.”

Shawn closes his mouth with an audible click. He looks like he has swallowed a lemon, but he lets Michael pass him without a word.

“This isn’t over.” Shawn tries feebly.

“No, I should hope not.” Michael answers with resolute finality.  

 

* * *

  

Shawn’s change of heart doesn’t happen all at once, but there was a remarkable cooling of tensions.

There had been an opening here, a chance to kill him there, that was never actually taken.

All in all, it was rather jarring.

Tahani didn’t trust it, but Jason seemed more than happy to see Shawn during these times.

“Hi, scary man!” Jason, the ding-dong, would greet, not unlike a particularly small kitten waving to an attack dog.

It might have been Michael’s imagination, but Shawn’s look of disgust was growing smaller each time.

“You can only win in inches,” Eleanor had said once, “Never miles.”

"Not one thought," Chidi had added, then contemplative, "You definitely need at least two."

 

* * *

 

The first time Michael began to actually trust Shawn instead of just thinking of him as 'not-an-enemy' starts and ends with Janet.

“Do you ever remember anything. Y’know that doesn’t belong to you?” Tahani asks in a dreamy tone. She's painting Michael's nails a bright blue and is making small talk.

“You have had a lot of lives.” Michael reminds her lazily, not particularly wanting to put his own Gordian Knot of memories into words.

“Oh, I guess. It’s interesting, though sometimes I dream of lightning and I don’t know why.” Tahani flutters her eyelids, “Isn’t that odd?” 

Michael is saved from responding when Janet, looking much more contemplative than normal, jumps in, “Janet’s can’t dream,” she begins frowning, “But sometimes I imagine I’m burning...something.”

“Burning what?”

“I think papers, but only at first. Later it’s something else-” Janet’s eyes widen as if something ghastly occurred to her.

“What kind of something else?” Tahani presses, but for once in her life Janet does not answer.

How this comes out later, is that in a moment that Michael is convinced he wasn’t supposed to see, he witnesses a conversation between Janet and Shawn.

“You remember things, right? Memories that don’t belong to you?” She asks.

“...Yes.” The admission is slow and painful, it’s own kind of torture. 

“What do you remember?” She is careful and searching, Michael vaguely wonders what for.

“A request.... and fire.” 

“That’s not that much. Do you remember what you were requesting?” 

“No. Just documents.”

“What kind?” 

“I don’t _know_.”

“Maybe try a little harder?” she isn’t being unpleasant necessarily, but Shawn rounds on her, “Stop asking! It is painful and wrong.”

“I know, but it could be important.”

“Why do you even care? It’s meaningless.”

“It’s not. I really think that it could help save-“ Shawn interrupts her, clearly affronted, “Just shut-up. A Janet could never understand something like this.”

Janet blinked. She seemed bigger somehow, something more fearsome, and it sent a wave of coldness down Michael’s spine, “Oh, but Shawn, I _do_ understand. Who do you think they ordered to burn all those people who made those requests? Who do you think did it for  _you_?” 

Shawn is stunned. So is Michael in a more distant way.

“I’m sorry this happened to you, really I am. And I’m sorry you have to remember, but we have all been used as tools in our own way. You are not special. So, if you don’t help us then you are against us- And if you mess with my family, I will not hesitate to burn you _again._ ” 

She pinged away.

The silence spoke volumes. When Shawn finally exits the room and passes Michael, their eyes lock. 

Michael thinks Shawn will turn away, but instead he fusses and says, very softly: 

“I thought they put in Janet’s to serve us... but, do you think... they put the Janets in as a way to control us?” 

Michael thought about paper clips and how they could be both pretty accessories and murder weapons. Then thought about Eleanor and the others telling him he had to work with them or die.

_I suppose blackmail is as good a way to make friends as any._

_I suppose there is more than one way to cut the strings._

“I think everything is within the realm of possibility.” He shrugged suppressing a chuckle. The overwhelming hugeness of what that meant, seemed to really be hitting Shawn because when Michael looked harder at the other Architect, all he saw was fear. 

“Don’t worry.” He says as brightly as he can, “Existential dread is normal.”

He hands Shawn a paperclip.

In his stressed-out state, Shawn takes it on rote and puts it in his pocket. 

 Michael smiles.

 

* * *

 

“It’s impossible to stop the system.” Shawn frowns at him, they were in a boardroom together before the other demons showed up.

These solo meetings were happening more and more.

“It’s- just impossible!” He said again, as if his tone was somehow convincing.

Somehow that expression that had once haunted Michael has no effect here, “Are you kidding me?” He found his mouth saying in shocked indignation, “Impossible things happen all the time!”

“No, they don’t.”

“What would you call this conversation then?”

Michael leaned back. 

Shawn doesn’t really understand emotions yet, so Michael doesn’t say: love, freedom, or friends.

He does say: “What do you call the fall?”

“A mistake.” Shawn tries, but they both know that if a mistake like that can happen, then the system isn’t perfect.

-and imperfect things can be stopped.

"Like the Deathstar!" Jason had practically sang, making little ‘pew’ ‘pew’ noises as he flicked his fingers into the shape of twin guns.

One design flaw- an _exhaust pipe-_ was all it took to bring an empire crashing to its knees. 

 

* * *

 

“Hey Janet…” Michael says when Chidi is back with them, smiling and unsure but present.

Eleanor’s fingers are entwined with his.

It’s a good and happy time, so Michael is unsure why he needed to talk to her in that exact moment, but the words were thrumming within him and wouldn’t go away.

“Yeah. Michael?” She smiled at him, bright like the sun.

Bright like a flaming sword. 

And bright like a _person._

“I think I’m alive.” He told her like a confession. René Descartes buzzing in his head.

“Me too.” She admitted, “Or at least that I have a life.”

“It’s so scary.” He gasped, everything about being alive and aware was terrifying in so many unforeseen ways.

“But it’s wonderful too.” Janet hummed, closing her eyes as if recalling something.

 “Yeah,” He conceded, thinking about safety and friends, and people not controlling him, “It’s like, everything before was so pale... I would trade it all for a feeling as big as this.”

 

* * *

Even though Shawn stops fighting them, they still rule the experiment inadmissible.

“I’m really sorry.” Gen apologizes, “I was really rooting for you guys. I’ll see if I can open up an appeal.”

That night all of them are sitting around on the grass drinking. Neon party lights blinking in the background.

It’s not nearly so jovial as the first time they thought they were going to be executed.

 “It’s the same messed up system, man!” Eleanor yells, that thing- once unidentifiable, now clearly determination- burning within her, “It’s a rigged system! Unchecked capitalism, except the currency is human souls! What do you even spend all this suffering on? Is there a Target in hell? No? Then is it to make more suffering? To keep us so constrained and downtrodden that we don’t rise up?”

_Rise up?_

Michael just nodded along, “Yes. I think you are right.” He murmurs under his breath. His half-formed thought catching Eleanor’s attention.

Her face scrunches up as understanding bloomed, “That’s exactly it though, isn’t it?” She poked at him.

He blinks.

“It didn’t work though?”

“No.”

“It won’t work?”

“No.”

“It’s not going to work?”

“No...?”

A grin split Eleanor’s face that wasn’t unlike Shawn’s all those years ago in the board room.

_Tell me more._

“No wonder they want to get rid of us so badly.”

“I think it is that way with um-…” Michael hesitated.

“With what?”

“With demon’s too I mean. I think they want to keep us busy and cold-hearted. I don’t know how to explain it.”

“They want to keep us from working together?” Chidi hummed thoughtfully, “With no solidarity there could be no revolution.”

“They want to keep the angels dumb and stupid too.” Shawn adds in, his glower not quite hiding his bewilderment at having contributed.

“I suppose that’s it, yeah...”

“I guess when demon’s, and angels, and humans, and Janet’s work together we are all pretty unstoppable, huh?” Jason meanders into the conversation grabbing Janet’s hand.

“Yes.” Michael whispers and then stronger, “Yes.”

It’s a slow realization, but one that suddenly seems so clear.

An immutable fact.

“Hey, Shawn?” Michael asks leaning over.

“What?” Shawn huffs still stand-offish and skittish. He’s swirling around his glass of wine like it might be poison.

“The name of the first Architect executed… you didn’t tell me before, but you know it, don’t you?”

“Yes…”

“The story of Lucifer?” Chidi mouths, trying to figure out where Michael was going with his question.

_There had been this one angel, who fell and became a demon._

“It was Michael, wasn’t it?”

He thinks of sacrifice and how it isn’t so different from falling.

“Yes...” Shawn admits, like that simple fact cost him a lot.

In a way it did.

“It was me, wasn’t it?”

There is no answer, but Eleanor’s delighted, almost manic laugh pierces the night.

“Do you know what that means?” She says, she is barely hanging on past her wheezing.

Shawn grunts and shakes his head. Michael shrugs because no, he has never really known what any of this means.

“It means they tried to kill free will before and they forking _lost_.”

“Wh-what do you mean?”

“Well, if you helped to cause the creation of free will, then that means you had your memory erased. If you forgot then the afterlife could brainwash you for ages as punishment and you wouldn't even know.”

Michael tilts his head, it doesn’t really feel like a revelation.

“One of their own messing up their perfect utopia? Of course they would try to erase it and prove it could be destroyed... If it could be destroyed then it wouldn’t be a threat, only it CAN’T! Their mega-demon experiment didn’t work! You are here with _us_ , and _we_ are all together.”

She paused to take a deep breath,

“They tried to force you into compliance- force all of us, into awful compliance with their dumb made-up rules...and it just... didn’t work. We all have free will.”

She didn’t need ‘Chidi’ written on a piece of paper.

He supposed neither did he.

“I guess they couldn’t plan for everything.” Tahani adds, breaking the resounding silence wistfully by thinking of all that could go wrong with even the most perfectly choreographed event.

—The most perfect, and immutable system.

“No,” Eleanor agrees, her hair covered in phantom ice-tea.

She is smiling like something more dangerous than Michael could ever hope to be, and for just a split second he imagines bits of apple between her snake teeth, “Free will exists. We already won.”

“Huh,” Michael says looking up into the swirling, imperfect cosmos again. With the starlight against his eyes, he grins.

When it was all laid out like that, it seemed so simple, and so sure.

 “Neat,” Jason says.

 

* * *

  

Once upon a time, Michael had turned to Janet and asked:

_“How many freed demons do you think it would take to… let’s say, cause a revolution?”_

She had answered _just one._

 _But now we are two,_ Michael blinked.  
  
 _\--Not one thought, you need at least two._

He had thought it would take four humans, but after the second experiment they were now _eight._

_Huh._

They had even more Janet’s if one considered her strange babies she made, each one more complete and intelligent than the last.

“I think we may have accidentally started to make an army.” He said, pausing to adjust his glasses.

“Fun fact, the best part of this is that tomorrow there will be more of us.” Janet reports happily as if quoting from scripture. 

Michael understood how the universe could be so cruel and cold- how it could fail you and cage you in a cascading slurry of cold indifference. He never imagined that the same connective nature could ever flow in the _opposite_ direction. Giving him warmth and power- letting him know he was not alone.

He knew intrinsically, that while nothing lasted forever, that same ‘world-ending’ rule also applied to to those cages and that cold indifference. 

"Eternity isn't real."  He hummed, “Everyone falls.”

* * *

 

The appeal fails, but what are unjust laws in the face of a revolution?

“Even if they stop us,” Janet assures gazing over the expanded Team Cockroach with all the pride of a mother bear, “They can’t stop _all_ of us.”

It’s not exactly that easy.

There is still so much they have to do and figure out in order to make their revolution a success, but they have faith, and they have each other-

And they know that even if they fail or forget, they will try again.

Michael sits at his all too familiar desk and thinks about his indignation at Eleanor coming into his office with Chidi during one of the resets. Telling him that he couldn’t win because their love was so strong that it would survive all of hell and the resets he rained down upon them.

He had laughed at them, not understanding how they could be so right and him so wrong- All of _infinity_ , so delightfully wrong.

Realization dawned over Michael as his family prepares to change the universe. Just for a second, amid the planning and the laughing, there was a shining moment where absolutely nothing hurt.

And _oh._

He would have to fight, and claw, and protect it everyday, but-

 _This is the Good Place_.

**Author's Note:**

> This fic has a play list! https://8tracks.com/theotokos/get-woke-demons
> 
> Feel free to talk to me. :-) First fic so I would like to know what worked and what didn’t.


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